1. Sample Poems

2. Example #1 Oh, have me sleep, rather than eat mayonnaise, With one million creepy grand-daddy long legs; Or take away my phone; or leave me alone In the dark; forbid me to eat chocolate; Make me stay a rainy day at Disneyland; Eliminate social life after school, Isolate me from all my best friends; Make me listen to opera, or raid my closet And dress me like a preppy… Things that to hear them told have made me tremble I would gladly do without fear or doubt To escape eating mayonnaise again!

3. Example #2 Oh, smash my PC into pieces, rather than make me eat celery, And destroy all of my favorite games; Or destroy my Captain America tickets And make me watch Batman v Superman a thousand times; Take my books and burn them; Sign me up for every sport; Make me teach Advanced Trigonometry While dressed like Miley Cyrus; (Did I mention the Batman v Superman thing? Because that movie was so bad!); All of these things and worse I would do gladly If it meant I never, ever had to eat celery.

4. Example #3 Oh, make me mix, rather than run track intervals Oil and water for the rest of my life; Or send me to ski Mt. St. Helens on May 8, 1980 Or body surf the Bonzai Pipeline; Or roll me down the stairs in a wheelchair; Or ride the Titanic’s maiden voyage; Be the horns of a ram in combat; Send my money to a TV evangelist; Or own the Colts; or Coach the Yankees; These things and worse I would rather do Instead of running intervals in track.

5. Example #4 Oh, run me through, rather than make me eat licorice, With a thousand dull, rusty, old knives Or disembowel me with a plastic spoon, Or pull off every fingernail and make me eat them, too Or throw me off a moving train, or from an airplane O’er the sharpest, rockiest crags of the mountains of the Alps, Bid me stay with vampires, or in a haunted house Where the demons are too frightening for words, Or cut my own tongue from my mouth And leave it between my toes. All this I would endure, And do it with a smile So long as no one ever says I must eat Anything so vile.