Day 27: Pre-Halloween Part IV

So, I have written a poem in my favorite style to celebrate the upcoming holiday.  This has taken me weeks to write, so I hope you enjoy it.  As I thought about writing this poem, I was reminded by the words of Milton in his classic Paradise Lost concerning the need for rhyme.  He said that "Rhyme being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse . . . but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom . . . . This neglect, then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulger readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set . . . of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming."

Well, if not rhyming is good enough for Milton, it is good enough for me.  My brother-in-law Bobby (actually he goes by Robert, but I have known him since he was 14, and back then, we called him Bobby) is a poet.  Seriously he is.  He is not one of these "poets" who is really a waiter or a bagger.  He studies at a university and produces poetry.  (Not that it is bad being a waiter or bagger too.  I was a bagger once.  In fact, it was my first job.  You know, the thing about bagging is that you can make whatever you want of it.  I remember several people that just simply hated bagging.  They dragged themselves around all the time with bad attitudes.  I tried my best to be the fastest bagger at the Smith's Food and Drug that I worked at, and I was.  I had this method (which we will call, "The Merchant Method") in which I would grab an item with my left hand, toss it in the air, catch it with my right hand, and place it in the bag.  I got so fast at it that I could have two or three items in the air at one time (for those of you with an overactive imagination, no, I did not throw the items four or five feet in the air, it was really more of a gentle toss from one hand to the other).  I was also one of those conscientious baggers that never put chemicals in the same bag as food, gingerly placed eggs or other delicate items on the top of the bag, and helped people to their cars.  Today's baggers are NOTHING like we were in the old days.  Today, there usually isn't even a bagger to help out.  In fact, the other day I was at Target, and of course, there was no bagger.  I decided to impress my wife by employing The Merchant Method, which I have not used in about 18 years.  When I broke the bottle of salsa (you would be amazed at how much salsa is actually in one of those little bottles) all over the cashier's work space, I decided to stop helping and just pay for the groceries instead.)

Anyway, I think Bobby would be proud of my poem.  Look friends, poetry is not easy.  It is demanding, unforgiving, and jealous.  It will eat you up and spit you out.  So, I present you this poem only after hard work, dedication, and devotion to the singular cause of writing a poem.  Here it is:

Sadness is a tree

with no leaves.  Like Halloween

without some candy.

Wow!  Isn't that powerful?  I am sure that you were expecting something a lot longer, but that is the beauty of the style of poetry I have used, the Japanese haiku.  It says it all in 17 moras (I have no idea what a mora is, but it is apparently different than a syllable, so don't say that I have the right number of syllables in my haiku).  As you can see, the poem is untitled, so when referring to it in your comments (which too few of you leave), please refer to it as Untitled, which I think is an awesome name for a poem.  Thanks and Happy Halloween tomorrow!