One bonus of being a humor writer is that I rarely take anything in my life seriously. This trait really helps me keep in good humor while the IRS repossess my house and sells my children into slavery, because I sent them a large note that says "just kidding" in my tax documents. Not only does this help me be good-natured but it also helps me creatively explore a good scam when I encounter one. I first encountered poetry.com during a dark, dreary time in my life were I had nothing else better to do. Since this describes pretty much every time in my life I wrote a little poem that expressed those feelings into words.

The Inner Ghost

A person with skin pasty and white
Dull fluorescence providing the only light
Eyes that have never seen the sun
A hunched figure that faces society's shun

In a basement, it spends the passing days
The world drifts past in a blanket of haze
The pale glow of a monitor, his only view
Since the release of Diablo II

This poem, fleeting on the edge of just plain awful, apparently struck the hearts cords of a marketing department mass snail-mailing computer and I received a letter several weeks later. My good friend, Christina, read the letter out loud to me and I'll never forget what it said. It told me that I, Aaron Frale, is finally a published author. However, this was a moment of comedy in itself because I was already a published author with my first book, Free Advice Just Add Money, and Christina was the cover artist. I'm glad I received this letter or else may have never known I was a published author. Maybe Christina could have thwaped me over the head with a copy of my book to remind me that I have been published before but luckily enough I had the letter there to remind me. Besides, my head is a lot less sore since that fateful day.

The letter consisted of many carefully plotted sentences complementing my artistic genius followed by many carefully plotted sentences expressing that it would be in my best interest to buy the book where my poem was published.

Digging deeper I decided to write another poem equally as uninteresting as the first. Except this time, I decided to use the lowest form of poetry known to man, the dirty limerick.

The Origin of The Dirty Limerick

There once was a limerick from Taiwan
Which was made by a worker named Xai Won
The Americans bought it
And after the audit
He has a really big house with a lawn

There once was a millionaire named Xai Won
Who cut a deal with a CEO named John
They created a limerick
Which was really a gimmick
That they marketed on poetry.com

There once was corporation named Won-John
That hostility acquired poetry.com
Their limericks were uncouth
And after the lawsuit
They could only sell cheap poems in Taiwan

Once again this mass mailing snail mail computer was moved by my words and decided to publish 'creative masterpiece' in yet another book of unusually high price. Once again my dear friend Christina thwapped me over the head with my book. Inspired by this new development (or maybe it was the brain damage from the head thwappings), I made another attempt to produce a poem so unbearable that even a computer, whose sole purpose in life is to publish every poem inserted into it, won't publish it.

Please Read!

If you can read this poem
Contact the authorities at once
I am being held hostage at poetry.com

I don't know how much longer I have to live
They have been executing poets each day
I fear that I maybe next

The poetry secret police are bribed with one
thousand dollars in hush money so they will
not tell of the horrors that plague this prison

With each passing day they torture us with
limericks and poetry from a sadistic
cantatrice simply called 'The Jewel'

I hope this poem reaches the public or else
I may never see the light of day

This piece was also published. This lead me to believe that I could have typed nothing but phone book entries in stanza format, name it something campy like "The Whispers of Albuquerque" and they would still have congratulated me on my artistic integrity. With all said and done, poetry.com did teach me one valuable lesson that even my poetry can be published. Thwap! Ouch. My head hurts.



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