Zookeeper• Show poetry

Well, I’ve been on this site for a while now, and I guess it’s about time to explain myself. I’m the keeper of a zoo, hence the name. I keep my days full by cleaning up the stalls, feeding, watering, and homeschooling the four animals that live in my house. They are your typical animals, messy, smelly, noisy, freaking exhausting and most of the time they are trying hard to rip each other to pieces with their razor sharp teeth. However, they are also damn cute and loveable, so I keep them. Their ages are ten, seven, four and thirty-two (that would be my husband). Besides my zoo keeping duties, I’m a student, an avid reader, and I try to write somewhere in-between.  I’m on this site because of Danna Hobart. She is an excellent writer and poet, and if you haven’t read her stuff then stop reading this bullshit and go read her poetry. Right now.

I write short stories every once in a while and I only write free verse poetry. I do not write rhyming poetry. One of the only rhyming poets I can honestly say I like is Phillip Larkin, and
that’s because his poetry
doesn’t sound like a mockery.
For me, he’s even a stretch.
Mostly, rhymes make me retch.
Though some can pull it off
That’s not me, thus I scoff
So, if I commend you on a rhyme
You must be beyond sublime.
Ok, I’m stopping now…getting a bit seasick. Does your dog have a tick? See what rhymes can do to a head? I’ve turned into Fezzik in the Princess Bride, “anybody want a peanut?”

Now, since I’ve come across some, shall we say, in your face people on this site I’m going to come out and just tell anyone who cares that I’m a Christian. *collective intake of shuddering gasps from certain Christians* not only am I a Christian but my husband is a Pastor. So that being said, please don’t try to save me, I assure you, I am, and I don’t need any self-righteous people up my ass. I save that place only for the people I really love. I like to point out what Flannery O’Connor, one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, who happened to be a Christian, said, "Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil. To look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept the fact that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction.” She also said, “Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.” So lighten up people, laugh at yourselves, I know I do.
Laugh at you, I mean.
No, I don’t. But I thought that wasn’t too bad of a joke.

Oh heads up, don't ask me for a critique unless you really want one. Most of the time, I can find something wrong with almost any poem, or at least something I would do differently. If you don't want to know, don't ask. I'll just stroke your ego like the rest of the nice jobbers.