Mankind's Highest Honor

Few moments in life are as memorable as your first kiss, your wedding day, or the time Tommy Keegan pushed you into the rosebush wearing just your bathing trunks. Maybe that just happened to me. Well all those moments pale in comparison to the thrill of sending your poem to a contest as a joke and having it selected as a award winner. I send the very odd people at www.poetry.com heartfelt thanks and bewilderment.

This Editors Choice Award ranks right up there with my Congressional Medal of Honor or one of those big stuffed orange penguins I won playing skiball at the L.A. County Fair. Okay that's not entirely true. It was kind of small actually.

The rules for the poetry "contest" seemed rigid. It indicated that "Your poem must fit entirely in this box in order to be eligible for the contest." I was inspired by these restrictions and perhaps channeled the spirit of a great poet from beyond the grave. You know, like when God performs a miracle through a mortal man. I was but a vessel for this divine creativity. So, I would like to thank the Baby Jesus, his dad (God), and my friends and family, and you. Yes, you. Without such unwavering support I never would have bothered to send in some gibberish to Poetry.com. Should I order a commerative plaque or my pay to have "my very own poem recorded by a professional speaker" or a leather bound collection of the unique and poems selected. Note the comment in blue where the Managing Editor said that my verse was "wonderfully expressive." You don't think it was a form letter that made it look like a handwritten note, do you? Screaming babies and stop signs are also wonderfully expressive. I don't see them getting any awards. Fascist poetry.com people! Why do they hate babies so much?

Powerful stuff indeed. Do you like they way I mocked the rules of the contest by using their own words? In fact, reading it over again just now I may have dazzled myself into a coma of raw utopian delight. Pinch me. Hard enough so that my head will burst like an over-ripe cherry tomato.