"The Far Side," but in Poetry

by Gary Larson, The Far Side.

My sister, sister-in-law and I went to the Faith & Writing Festival at Calvin College. I've been to several and they're always great. This year I happened to hear several poets read or talk about poetry and one was Aaron Belz. When he read his poem "Worms" (below), I thought his poetry was like "The Far Side" cartoon -- but in poetic form.

He kind of takes words or phrases or sayings and flips them every which way. Some of his poems are super short. When he read those, there'd be a silence as people waited: Was there more? Oh, he's done, okay, clap. He would read them very straight-faced, kind of deadpan, and hardly ever react. Just a tiny smile once in a while.

I ordered the book Lovely, Raspberry and am enjoying reading more of them.

Enjoy.

critique

That's not very good.

Try doing that differently.

That's not very good either.

You're not very good at this.

worms

Cyclists, as a rule, think bikers are cheating,

because they have engines. Pedestrians, in turn,

think cyclists are cheating; they use wheels.

People in wheelchairs think pedestrians

have a leg up, for obvious reasons,

but pedestrians think the same thing

about people in wheelchairs; they use wheels.

What makes people in wheelchairs unique

is that they also think cyclists and bikers

are cheating. Their disdain is uniform.

The wheelchairists' hypocrisy lies,

however, in their use of automobiles.

Everyone uses automobiles except worms.

Worms think they're better than everyone.

Worms think they're more authentic than everyone.

This is why people say worms are self-righteous.

To worms' credit, however, they aren't hypocritical,

except the ones that glide down the sidewalk

on hundreds of tiny legs, blithely ignoring

their wilted, sun-blackened comrades.

Those worms are called millipedes.

Those worms are really bad apples.