One of the informative and sometimes hilarious things about having a WordPress blog is that you get to see how people stumbled on your work.

 I get a lot of search-engine hits from people (no clue who they are) looking for tips on how to get their toddlers to eat well - apparently my veggie post is racking up some hits. I also get quite a few on learning to write, although I’m sad to see that not all of them are looking for what I have said. Too bad I couldn’t be more help.

 A little more disconcerting is people who are looking for directions about assembling some version of a platform - whether physical or political. The name of my blog has nothing to do with either of those things, alas for the poor searchers who were waylaid by siren-song of my fascinating title.

Occasionally I’ll see a search that led someone to my blog and think “how in the world did that come up?

One such was the recent search, “mean poems to say at enemies.” While I have never posted anything of the sort, I have to say that this kind of attention is not as discouraging as the platform searches. It just so happens that as a teenager I was rather adept at that particular form of raillery. Many are the poems I composed just to satisfy that itch of inferiority deposited in my heart by someone’s snubbing or mistreating me.

 None of the guys who inspired these poems (yes, all my girlhood enemies were of the male gender) ever actually saw them. However, despite never having the courage to actually repeat any of these masterpeices to their subjects’ faces, I know some of them will be just the thing for someone out there. I still treasure them as examples of how mature, how erudite, how forgiving I was as a girl. Indeed, I was a model of the judicious, temperate, and discreet interpersonal problem-solver.

 For your perusal, dear readers, I give you the “Poems for Non-Lovers”,  courtesy of the 14, 15, and 16 year old Me.

 Shane
The Pain
Down the Drain
He’s got soapsuds
In his brain.
Feed him gruel
Feed him grain
‘Cause he’s cruel
‘Cause he’s Shane.
Shane
The Pain
Down the Drain.
He’s got soapsuds
In his brain.

(As the perceptive reader can see, the above verse was composed by collecting as many rhymes as I could find for the name of the hapless Shane and turn them into negative statements of some sort or another. Brilliant, no? As I recall this particular boy’s offence was to declare my IQ equal to that of an ant’s. No doubt he has thought about my IQ every day since then, though we are long parted, and goes about telling stories about AK and her imbecility. I also recall that I was washing dishes as I composed this poem and I think the text reflects this rather nicely.)

I knew him, you see
This certain young man
And that is why I saw him
And ran.

In the plan of the ages
This tragedy is:
That I
Should be an acquaintance of his.

(This was created when I perceived the need to have an all-round rhyme for the many ill-tempered and injudicious boys surrounding me.)

(B) 

I never gave you a second look
Because one look was quite enough
For me to know that a look a day
Would be really, really tough.

(A) 

Handsome, with talents galore
He knows what he’s here for -
He thinks he was made to bring romance
To women’s lives with his every glance.
However, he never succeeds;
A fault or two is what he needs!

 (The above indicates a transition into a new type of versified insult - the “why I’m not interested in you” kind. The difference, of course, between me and my tormentors at this point was that they didn’t want me first. Everyone knows the person who started it is the real trouble-maker.)

(C) 

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Your hair is like french fries,
Your voice a kazoo.

(D)

“Violets are purple
Roses are pink
My dream boy wears (insert popular male scent),
While you merely stink.”

(While A and B were purely personal, I felt that I had discovered my true talent and began to create generalized verses for the use of females and males indiscriminately. C is adressed by a male to a female, D a retort to the male who had spoken C. Obviously, having reached a more sophisticated stage in my writing career, I began to turn the poems into a sort of dramatization of my own experience with the opposite gender.)

There you are, gentle reader. Or not so gentle. May they be as useful to you as they were to me, which is to say, not very.