And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a parody. Besides being fun, writing parodies can be a great way to hone your poetic skills – particularly your sense of rhyme and sound, as you try to mimic the form of an existing poem while changing the content. Just find a poem – or a song – that has always annoyed you, and write an altered, silly version of it. Or, alternatively, find a poem with a very particular rhyme scheme or form, and use that scheme/form as the basis for a poem that mocks something else.

If you’d like to get some inspiration, you might consider some of the poems that Lewis Carroll included in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which parody the moralistic verse of Isaac Watts. For example, “The Crocodile” is a send-up of Watts’ “How Doth the Little Busy Bee,” while “Tis the Voice of the Lobster” is a parody of Watts’ poem “The Sluggard.” Or, for a briefer and more whimsical poem, consider “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat,” which is a parody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

I chose Emily Dickinson’s poem, because-i-could-not-stop-for-death to write a parody on. I absolutely love the poem and before I begin, I want to say ‘I am sorry Emily if I’ve hurt your feelings.’ I’ve maintained the punctuation and structure as much as I could. The background to the poem is my current feeling. I’ve ordered food and I’m waiting.

Because I could not go out for lunch-
I ordered take away-
A 18" pizza, garlic bread, mozzarella sticks-
Slice of heaven for me.

I waited for the delivery boy- he knew not how starved I was
I shoved aside all that I had to do
Watching TV and writing poetry too,
For my weeping tummy-

Together we waited, the minutes crawled
the clock ticked- the pendulum bobbed-
And when the doorbell rang-
To the door we ran-

Or rather- I did-
At the door a cardboard box lay-
and two more on the top-
sachets of Italian seasoning- oregano and some herbs -

My fingers trembled as they placated the elixir open
I thought I would faint-
the hunger I felt had made me blind-
I saw not what I devoured- from the  box-

Since then-its only been an hour- and yet
I'm feeling  famished already
Was I the one who ate it all 
or was it just my tummy-

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P.S. Today I attached a link to the poems I wrote on this day in the last four years of NaPoWriMo. I got this idea from a blogging friend and I felt it was a good way for poems lying in the rack to see the light of day. And my blogging friend said that not all deserved to see the light of day. So I’ve shared the poems I wrote in 2019 and 2018. I hope you enjoy reading them.

NaPoWriMo: Day 26 – I didn’t know 2019

NaPoWriMo 2018: Day 26 – A Poem that touches all senses -WhEn Will this MaDnESs EnD? 2018