"Jules"

Well, I swear I started this post on Friday, but it will posted on Saturday because now it's past midnight. But alas, t'is here nonetheless. (I bet you can tell what kind of voice you will hear in this upcoming piece... it's still in my brain haha!) I apologize for las Friday's post... many of you read it and now I'm embarrassed. To tell you the truth, I was rushed for time and so I was really pushing it with the quality of that particular week's content and now I regret it. I've learned a valuable lesson about my writing though: "It is better to be good than be fast!" This post is "EXIBIT A" of exactly that. :)

So..... I've made it up to you! This is a new favorite of mine! (Wow, my favorites list is really growing!) I asked my Fiancé for advice on what I could write this week and she suggested that I write something funny. Can any of you remember the last time you were told to even SAY something funny, let alone WRITE it!? I admit, funny things take time, and being put on the spot makes it even worse. I was half tempted to just give up on that suggestion but I powered through, and now we have today's content! I hope it at least makes you snicker. :)

(This is a Limerick... if you do not know how to read one, please look up how to, it will make this a lot funnier)

"Jules"

There’s a kid that I met in school,

They seem to call him “Jules,”

I say that I met him,

Yet really just fret him

You see, I know no social rules.

This boy, he sits there plainly,

In the same location, mainly;

Yet I never knew why

How possibly I

Could regard him ever so vainly?

…Well, there was this one time though,

When I tried to say hello

Yet he sat there stone faced,

Entirely spaced,

And he ruined my poor ego.

…Also about his eyes…

They call them fixed and wise

But to me they are blank

—Being nothing but frank—

They’re not even a suitable size!

I guess I just don’t understand,

Why he, rather, looks like a man

When he should really be three,

Golly, it truly beats me,

Why he’s in our scholastic clan.

*a few days later*

Well now I feel very bad

For picking on that lad,

I needed new glasses,

And skipped a few classes,

To obtain a pair with my dad.

You know that unusual geezer?

And my want to be the teaser?

Looking past my own snout,

This whole time, it turns out:

T’was a statue of Julius Caesar.

-Cale Kenneth Montoya (03-01-24)

This is Slow Notion's first ever Limerick! I had a lot of fun writing this one. In case you couldn't tell... which would probably make you the equivalent of a statue of Julius Caesar, the main character in the book thought that the statue was a boy in his class because his glasses weren't strong enough.

Maybe some of you didn't think it was funny an are staring at this screen "stone faced." If you are, I understand, you are just "being nothing but frank," but I still have something that might intrigue you: I've learned recently in my studies at BYU (I'm studying Creative Writing for all of you who didn't know) that poems with different amounts of lines in their stanzas (sections marked by blank spaces) have specific names. For example, a poem with three-stanzas is called a "tercet." Additionally, a poem with four lines in its stanzas (that I have done in almost every poem) is called a "quatrain," a poem with five lines in its stanzas is called a "quintet," and so forth. This poem takes the form of a quintet because it has five lines to distinguish it from other stanzas. Am I the only one who thinks that literature isn't as boring as it sounds?

BUT WAIT......THERE'S MORE.... Perhaps the easiest stanza quantity to rhyme with is a quatrain because it is balance by either every other rhyme or two rhymes in succession. Here comes some more knowledge that you didn't ask for: When a poem rhymes and flows with a predicable rhythm, is is considered to be "closed form." --I like to remember it being called that because it's like a rule that can't be broken... a "closed rule." As for the ones that don't rhyme or a set structure that is easy to notice, we call those: "open form," --meaning, "open to suggestions," and free in almost every way.

So, can you identify what this "Jules" poem is? It's a closed form poem in quintet stanzas... most limericks are! Now you know!

Thank you for supporting my blog! Tell your friends!

-Cale Montoya