A Misfit Born and Bred

(for all the pretty girls)

A misfit born and bred I do
Exactly as I please
But kindly as my mother taught
("God bless you" if you sneeze)

And if I spend the night with you
I'll thank you in the morn
For all the wonders we have wrought
(How lovely to be born!)

The world has turned and I have learned
A trick (or maybe two)
While hardly working I have earned
A place in poetry
A "name" though I have never sought
To turn the world to me

And best of all (as falls the fall)
I've had a roaring time
If quietly if poor and small
Mucking about with rhyme

A misfit born and bred I do
Exactly as I please
But love to entertain you too
With nonsense-lines like these

+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMVII Mind the Cows

lol I dont know if this was intended or not, but i think that this poem is very cute!

Blimey! You must be a pretty girl (and right here, reading this wee nubbin poem of mine [and liking it, daresay!])!

One devoutly wishes to be cute, of course; so I'm really flattered and shufffling foot-to-foot, if figuratively, with giggling gratitude. I'm so glad you like it.

I just dashed it off one warm evening recently on a bench by the Plaza fountain; a friend happened by and asked me to read it and he gave me the solemn declaration that I should be rich and hogging lots of shelf-space at Barnes & Noble. I told him they had my books on their website, and they might have a copy or two lying about the store, but he was delightfully encouraging. He ordered me to publish it just as I read it to him, and then he would buy the book in which it lands (the next one, the lucky thirteenth, I imagine). And so I did.

I'm really glad you like it. I've taken to carrying a few poems with me in my pocket when I go to town these evenings, just in case. Last night a very pretty girl indeed liked another one of mine, called "Phone Home From the Twilight Zone." I like that one; I think it turned out rather well. Sometimes my poems are terribly serious, as though poor Nietzsche had somehow slipped back among us, like the one I wrote yesterday, "Now and Then;" that one was a sort of a special case, because a friend of mine had asked me pretty much every existential question one ever asks--this in a vast email, it was--and all I could really do was write him a treatise of a poem. I haven't heard he's killed himself ...quite yet. And he thanked me.

But I very often write poems which I very much hope are funny. I love to make people laugh, even if it is the red laugh of absurdity (perhaps especially!).

Thanks again, new friend and fellow poet.

Is it getting to be southern spring in NZ now? Fall is coming on up topside here.

Mind the Kiwis,

+Stevie

lol how I blush to think that anyone could ever wrongly accuse me of being a pretty girl! hehe in my deepest dreams perhaps I could dare to believe I was, but certainly I never permit my waking mind to wander to such thoughts!

I've been reading through the forums, and ofcourse your authorsden page, and I have yet to come across anything you've written that I even mildly dislike its such a wonderful feeling to be able to just read and read and be engulfed by your words you were completely right with what you told me; you do range quite a bit throughout them all! from ridiculously funny poems through to 'Nietzsche-ish' thoughts. I love it

~Jessy

PS- yes it is spring here, although you wouldnt know it! I am currently at university in one of the southernmost towns here in New Zealand; Dunedin. It might as well still be winter here!