Pooty Free Ameter

In last month’s Real Change we announced that we would throw a birthday party for our (that is, Seattle’s) mayor, the distinguished and beloved periodic Frenchperson, Paul Schell. I bet you all thought we were just goofing, didn’t you? Hah! We really meant it! We love to do things like that! Anything for a hoot and a piece of cake! That’s just the way we feel about it around here!

Meanwhile, as the evening of the party approached, what with the flurry of preparations etc., there was an absolute, literal, palpable air of excitement here in the Real Change office. I mean, you could actually really FEEL the air, it was so palpable. Or at least, stuff in it was...

So, anyway, I was inspired by something palpable in the air in our office to write a humble little speech for the occasion of Mayor Paul Schell’s Birthday. Lacking anything better to do, I would like now to share that speech with the entire Real Change readership, at this time (now). So here is that speech:

I would like to talk about Mayor Schell, because this is, after all, HIS birthday party and that’s why we’re all here, to talk about Mayor Paul “max-a-million, any-million” Schell.

But before I do that, I would like first to take some time out to praise iambic tetrameter.

Iambic tetrameter is, as I have said many times before and in many places, the ameter without which the immortal line “they’re coming to take me away, ha, ha!” could never have been uttered.

If that were the only praise I could sing of iambic tetrameter, I would sing that praise endlessly, but luckily, for all of you here listening to me this evening, there is so much more:

For example, iambic tetrameter is NOT a pooty ameter, like that iambic PENT-ameter is, and this endears it to me, as it should to all right-thinking and right-feeling Americans.

Indeed, for hundreds of years pooty English poets, both in their native England and in their non-native other countries that they’ve gone off to (like this one), have pooted all over the place with their pooty iambic pentameter, whose every single pooty line drags on exactly one pooty beat too long.

Iambic tetrameter KNOWS when enough is enough. “ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE!” -- that’s iambic tetrameter’s motto! -- and it lives it, line after line after line after line after line after non-pooty line.

Moreover, iambic tetrameter is faithful. Oh, sure, it isn’t as flashy or as exotic as is, for example, anapestic tetrameter. But iambic tetrameter will always be there for you, waiting patiently and forgivingly while you come slinking home with that anapestic lipstick on your collar, those lacy crotchless silky anapestic panties tucked just inside your left front pant’s pocket, and that anapestic vibrator left carelessly on, wasting batteries, causing that peculiar walk of yours.

There are so many more wonderful things that I could tell you about iambic tetrameter, involving for instance Keiko The Killer Whale and/or Elizabeth Dole, but I have just reminded myself that we are here, after all, to talk about Mayor Schell, so I should get on with that instead.

But before I do that, I would like to present a little poem that I have written. No, actually I was just kidding, I am going to present a poem AND talk about Mayor Schell -- simultaneously! I call my poem

Our Mayor Schell Sure Does Mayor Well!

or Opus 67 (Count Them!) Spanks

by © Dr. Me, Wes Browning

Our Mayor Schell sure mayors well!

He mayors swell! -- as I will tell:

He mayors here, he mayors there,

he mayors gladly anywhere,

He is the mayor with the plan,

he doesn’t sit upon the can!

Five hundred thousand he would spend,

-- far more than any’d dare to lend --

that women & kids be off our streets

as one of many Christmas treats!

It’s not his fault five hundred thou’

is not enough. -- Don’t have a cow!

Our mayor Schell DOES mayor great --

So WHAT if he can’t calculate?

-- Thank You.