zealots haiku Options

[itsinhiseyes]

zealot's haiku



hope springs eternal
freedom loving western folk
wage war on terror

summer time madness
we bring drought to all who doubt
its for your own good

autumn leaves fall
a carpet of cluster bombs
do not resist us

winter snow flakes fall
depleted uranium
blowing on the wind

one more time y'all
gather round the old oak tree
sing and praise the lord

spring sales come again
roll up get your bargains here
blood price life is cheap

summer holiday
all off to play in the sand
its not about oil

knock knock trick or treat
scary witches on broomsticks
coming to you soon

hang out your stockings
good christians all of you
jingle all the way

[Hey Hey]

I'll buy you a syllable for Christmas!

Very good!

[itsinhiseyes]

which syllable would that be Hey? Christians? Two syllables or three.? Three by my reckoning. christ i ans.

[Hey Hey]

I don't want to be flamed for pronunciationism, but I have never heard christ i an, only christ ian. However, I stand to be corrected.

[itsinhiseyes]

must be the difference between us southerners and you northerners. Thanks for commenting anyway.

[Rick]

Haiku are problematic across the sea. For example, the word "secretary" might have three or four syllables, depending where one is.

[itsinhiseyes]

counting syllables
christian theory four or six?
Bernard says its four

ambiguity
it depends where you come from
regional diff rence?

speak the queens english
articulate vowel sounds
pronounciation

ee by gum tha knows
a yorkshire man speaks like that
please don't take offence


now if you talk posh
its the-o-ry not theer-y
thats how I say it

and further to that
christ-i-an and not christ-yan
hope this clears things up

[Hey Hey]

Hi its

'Am not frum Yorkshire, I jist live ere. At grammar school, twert Queen's English I were taught tho, along wit Latin, French and Spanish. But a must admit, mi muther wo German, who learned er English in Llangollen. (Llangollen is in Wales for the uninitiated).

[itsinhiseyes]

I'll accept your mixed pedegree as an explanation Hey. I suppose a mixture of Welsh and German is bound to have had an effect on your pronounciation, grammer school or not. It doesn't seem to have held you back in life, judging by your impressive inventory of academic achievements.

I know Llangollen well. As a juvinile I used to cycle through there on the way to Bala to visit a girlfriend. I also once abseiled off the Chirk viaduct, and got drunk in the taverns of Oswestry.

[Hey Hey]

No, you take it the wrong way; my English is the Queen's. And that's not necessarily an advantage! I love these regional accents though. I used to think that the Newcastle accent grated a bit, but then I taught a student from Sunderland and her speach was like soothing music. She put me straight and I have tried to explore dialects since then. We have so many in the UK and when you explore them a bit more deeply you find that they have such character and beauty, and say a great deal about the people in the region; although we are homogenising dialects very quickly nowadays. But no, I didn't pick up my mother's accent. But then again who would want to call nutcrackers "nutknackers" anyway, and she would get washed in the think after sinking about it for a while - embarrasing! I dread to sink, er think, what my German sounds like to my relatives over there.

[itsinhiseyes]

I am in complete agreement with you Hey on regional accents. My least favourite is the Brummy, but each to their own. Accents are what give character to speech, and each dialect has its own humour. We'd all be the poorer without them.

[Hey Hey]

One of my mother's sisters came to England shortly after her and ended up in Birmingham. What an accent that was! And yet, I had a postdoc work for me who originated in Birmingham. His accent was unnoticeable most of the time, until his relatives visited. Then it showed and actually it was quite nice becasue everyone tried to impersonate him. It was all good fun and taken that way by him. But I always think of Jasper Carrot and cringe. We have a Jasper on the boards at the moment. I hope it's not him. Well I quite like his jokes anyway (just covering my back now).

[itsinhiseyes]

Thanks hey hey. You actually made me laugh out load there. Yes I'm befuddled too. Is this some mutant dialect unbeknown to us, or are we just old and out of touch? A real brain teezer eh?

[Hey Hey]

I'll read the stuff again later when I've had an Irish or two. Maybe it will make more sense then. Although I doubt it!