Terry Flood Poet Limerick

Notes About The Poem

 

 

My Way Or N A

Often, I enter a contest
I enter the ones I like best
But one sponsor said
Write stood on your head
I moved on to check out the rest

Another said stand in a bucket
Write Latin, or I’m gonna chuck it
Eight lines by the way
Or get an NA
I thought about that and said f… ..

[They say stick to your chosen form
You should never break with the norm
In two stanza’s time
I’m switching to rhyme
The purist would kick up a storm]

But what really scrambles my brain
Is what comes up time and again
It’s apps for surmounting
The problem of counting
And one’s a particular pain….

*

‘How many syllables’, that’s what gets me
The logic it uses ain’t easy to see
Take for example the simple word ‘Wouldn’t’
They say it’s one syllable…
See it?..
I couldn’t

It misreads quotation marks, single or double
A single’s a syllable….. doubles?…. no trouble
It claims that the open quote counts as a syllable
Yet the ensuing quote counts not at all

Now I’m not unique so I run with the crowd
And I’m sure that no-one reads quote marks aloud
With ‘How Many Syllables’, if demand lingers
I simply ignore it and count on my fingers

But Soup has a resource called ‘Syllable Counter’
Which disregards quote marks that it may encounter.
In ‘shouldn’t’ and ‘wouldn’t’ and ‘mustn’t’ and ‘couldn’t’
The syllables all number two
And all of that makes pretty good sense to me… 
So does it make good sense to you?

*

I love writing poetry, dearly
And often I get it right… nearly
So please do feel free
To set rules for me
But ‘How Many Syllables’?…. Really?

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Malabika Ray Choudhury April 1, 2024 at 10:34 AM Enjoyed your poem very much, Terry. Counting syllables I dare not depend on myself...although I am not too bad! But counting words? One site gave me 57, and manually counting, I got 58. But ultimately our Poetry-Soup Word-counter (or Character Counter) is telling me, it's 60. So funny!

Gary Radice March 10, 2024 at 1:49 AM Thanks for the big smiles your poem left on my face this morning Terry. I think it comes down to accents or spelling in the end. Well, it does for me..For instance Cholmondely would have the syllable police pulling their hair out - It’s a UK place name and has only 2 syllables…as it is pronounced Chumlee. Give me syllabubs over syllables anyway. Cheers - Gary Terry Flood March 12, 2024 at 4:37 PM I did literally spend an evening or two trying to figure out why ‘HMS’ insisted my syllable count was wrong… drove me batty but figured it out in the end. So, when the contest came up, it was almost like a gift from the Gods… until I forgot to enter it. Glad you enjoyed, Gary. Terry

Linda Alice Fowler February 24, 2024 at 7:20 AM LOL Terry. HMS also counts an em dash as a syllable. Like you, I resort to using my fingers. ;) Terry Flood February 24, 2024 at 2:44 PM Thanks, Linda. I hadn’t discovered the em dash thing… but yes - fingers count best!

Gershon Wolf February 10, 2024 at 7:05 PM Enjoyed. Totally. btw. How many syllables in totally? Beats me... Terry Flood February 24, 2024 at 2:41 PM Thank you, Gershon. I suspect HMS will say ‘totally’ is seven syllables, unless you add a smiley face… then it’s fifteen ;-)

Bill Baker February 9, 2024 at 9:59 PM Very creative and entertaining poetry, Terry. You go guy! LOL Thanks for sharing and good luck in the contest. Bill Terry Flood February 24, 2024 at 2:39 PM Thanks, Bill. Actually, I only discovered a few days ago that I forgot to actually enter the contest. Duh!

Deb M February 9, 2024 at 5:13 AM Love it Terry….you are one creative clever and lets not forget funny fella!!! Debx Terry Flood February 9, 2024 at 2:49 PM Only hope none of the sponsors that call for ‘How Many Syllables’ take offence. It’s a bit of fun as Matt has called for…… honest Your Honour. Glad you enjoyed, Deb. Terry

Tom Cunningham February 9, 2024 at 12:07 AM Very creative Terry I sense a winner, you covered them all. Good luck in the contest. Tom Terry Flood February 9, 2024 at 2:46 PM Thanks, Tom. Glad you enjoyed this. Drove me bonkers at the time but a genuinely (if partly true) tongue in cheek write ;-)

David Fisher February 8, 2024 at 6:16 PM Indeed a fave in my book! A fun roller coaster rant of rhyme and thought and answers. So far I've only used 'How Many Fingers', and if ten or less, it's a win. Terry Flood February 9, 2024 at 2:44 PM Thanks muchly for the fave, Dave. I spent a whole evening a while back trying to figure out why ‘How many syllables’ kept miscounting my lines. I knew they were right but HMS just wasn’t having it. I was dumbfounded to find that a word in single quotes gets treated as having an extra syllable (ie ‘Jaws’ = 2) and that shouldn’t was considered to be 1 syllable. I wonder how many great writes have received the infamous ‘NA’ through HMS and its wacky foibles. Still, it inspired this write and got me a fave… and that’s all right by me.