Warren - Thais is the very reason that I never take my dogs to the flea market.

I'm scatching just reading this!! LOL

Fleas? Not a fan! This, however, is another matter!

"Poem" has two syllables, as any dictionary will tell you, else my iambic tetratmeter wouldn't have -- n/m. -- My second line wouldn't have matched with the first. So,
"A bug as buggy...." would have worked.

"Upholstery" has four syllables, so you're one over. You can do that, but let the reader know of the unexpected elision: "upholst'ry" works. I took poetic license by omitting the unstressed first syllable in Line 11, and eliding "poem" to the one syllable used by most sloppy speakers in the century since I died. This makes the line fit that iambic tetrameter pattern used throughout. So OK on your line there.

Gosh, if only there were some sort of instruction set or guide that writers could easily follow to guarantee that their parodies paced perfectly ... .:)

My my, Mr. Killjoy! I am DELIGHTED that someone has finally caught on to little Warren's ruse in insuating his own meter scheme upon such incredible and delicate poetic structures. Will he ever learn? And he is from the south, no less, the home of 'inserting syllables' and not 'deleting' them. I sigh.
I do have a dream that one day a member of the family of Testudinidae will light a candle whose brightness will dance the way to better meter interpretation. Alas, a lack of opposing thumbs makes this sadly improbable. I sigh again.

Guy, back in college, my apartment had a most horrible flea infestation whose main domicile was the most comfortable couch on the planet. Happily, we cleared the apartment of fleas, but the couch was an unfortunate casualty.
Thanks Mark, and here's some benadryl to help with the itch!
Gracias, Bilbo. Glad to see you're sharing some of your 'Lost' works on the site!
Curses, Killjoy! You may have won this time resurrecting the ghost of my 5th grade English teacher and a century old poet, but you shan't savor too long. Till next time when the meter will be sweeter with a rhythm to fit 'em... (mad laughter echoes down a damp corridor, the sound building in volume until...)

How did you ever get to be an English teacher, using non-words like "insuating"? Must be lower standards in the South (mwahaha)....

Kidding!.. undoubtedly either a typo, or just one of those "memory lapses" that someone so eloquently described last week. :-D

And your dream is no dream -- that candle has already been lit, proving that a physical handicap -- uh, "differently-abled" (PC Police were knocking on the door) is no bar to accomplishment: Sigh no more, Sir!
http://home.earthlink.net/~tommythedancingturtle/id3.html

And you'll be relieved to know that it contains *no* instructions in Latin-named metrical forms, like "spondyllic speedometer" or "trochaic tachometer". ... So, with your diligent study therein, indeed there is no doubt that future works will have meter that is neater and a mansion's worth of scansion. -- J. K.

(hey, that could stand for "Just Kidding", too.... )

Pardon me for intruding on this literary discussion, but (alas! Warren paid no more attention in Biology than in English -- sigh!) Testudinidae is the *family* of *land tortoises*, whereas I am fairly certain that the subject in question has repeatedly identified himself as a *sea turtle*, of the *family* Cheloniidae -- both being members of the *order*, Testudines.

Despite being the only species in the genus Chelonia, the green sea turtle nonetheless has a species name assigned: genus/species = "Chelonia Mydas".

So, the next time your car sounds noisy, take it to a Mydas Muffler Shop. (A *lot* of readers have wished for a Mydas Muffler) [howls of outrageous laughter echo etc.]. One-hour detention, Warren.

p. s. Do you know why the current trend of students having s*x with teachers? The kids finally figured out the advantage of doing it with teachers -- they make you do it over and over again until you get it right.           (up-roarious, rapturous, repetitive reptilian laughter resonates, raising the roof, as multiple rim-shots reverberate through the vertebrata; guitar chords riffing through the chordata; animalia a message some time.)

My word! It seems I've been spelling this incorrectly all these years. At least I know how to spell tortise. My word! I've done it again!

I think my '5' Grade English teacher has been hitting the sauce again, and I don't mean Ragu.
And to my 8th Grade Biology Teacher, thanks for 'shelling' out that correction. Your instruction has always had the Mydas touch (rim shot, pistol zip, shotgun blast...and maybe some tympani)

... whadja think? ... In case there was a "memory lapse", we'll just have to "plug" that lapse. ("plug" -- ha, get it?) -- and not so loud with those shotgun blasts; you're hurting my tympanic membranes! ... Cupy the following, and paste into that blank space in the upper right of the browser:

http://home.earthlink.net/~tommythedancingturtle/id3.html

Don't forget to hit "Enter" afterwards... ;)

Enter, eh? THAT'S how it's done! I was wondering what that key was for. That explains why my door never opens when I want it to...;-D.
Actually, i've read the guide and tried it. On some occassions, depending on what I'm trying to get across, I go for a slightly different rhythm but try to keep the number of syllables consistent with the original. I try not to jerk the rhythm in a different direction to where your head snaps back and you call for a lawyer saying, "That Warren, if he hadn't bastardized the accents, I wouldn't have jerked my head back so hard...and now I have fleas." To that end, I found the guide really useful (I'm expecting the check!), and it gets my head thinking about tightening the lines. And it removes fleas.
Sorry about your tympanics. I'll try not to wax so poetic next time (quiet rim shot with not so much of cymbal crash...maybe a cymbal glance)!

Thanks for softening the ear-whacks (I *kill* me!), for the compliments to the Guide's cymbalism, and yes, you may definitely pick up the check. The waiter is bringing it now....

Not a problem. Happy to pick...what a tick...WHO ORDERED THE DOM PERIGNON???