14/08/2024
My losing entry to the Wergle flomp poetry contest.
One whole month to write about Me, and my ADHD
Where to start?
I suppose with a style?
What are the guidelines?
A poem, a Wergle, it has to be funny, witty and sharp.
Wait.
Can you use commas in poems?
According to GPT
You can use commas.
Wait.
Do Poems have to be grammatically correct?
That damn Grammarly keeps correcting me.
According to GPT
In poetry, strict adherence to the rules of grammar is not always necessary.
Wait.
Grammarly has just corrected GPT, it’s a soft correction but still…
Okay, after forty-five minutes of reading reviews, I’m still not any clearer
As to whether I should get Grammarly Premium or not.
I have a strong suspicion it’s not worth it.
For my sanity, for now, I’ll ignore it and push on.
Where was I?
Oh yes, the ode to my ADHD.
Wait.
Is it an ode though?
Isn’t an ode more of a song?
A love song even?
Do I love my ADHD?
According to GPT
Odes are known for their lofty emotion, elaborate praise,
and deep exploration of their subject matter.
Over the past hour or so, I have learned
about Pindaric (Pythian) Odes,
Horatian Odes,
and Irregular Odes.
So to start a subject close to my heart.
My attention deficit, my wandering focus.
Wait.
Am I supposed to rhyme this?
Does modern poetry rhyme?
According to GPT
Not necessarily is the answer. Vague but it’ll do.
Wait.
What if I start rhyming am I committed to the rhyming scheme?
Why can’t I spell “committed” correctly the first time?
In fact, why are there constant words I can’t spell correctly the first time?
Like ocassion - occassion - occasion.
Or embarassment - embarasment - embarrasment - embaresment
Ach, just look at spell check. There we go, embarrassment.
Two ‘Rs’ and two esses.
Why can’t I remember that?
Wait.
Is that a thing?
Like a disorder or something?
According to GPT
A cacographer is someone who has poor handwriting
or consistently makes spelling mistakes.
Derived from the Greek words "kakos" meaning bad,
and "graphein" meaning to write.
So obviously that’s me.
Okay, back to me and my ADHD
Check the guidelines again.
It has to be in English or English gibberish.
Wait.
Can gibberish be spoken in different languages?
What does Spanish gibberish sound like?
Huh.
According to GPT,
it can indeed, because even though gibberish is nonsensical
It follows phonetic rules, so Spanish gibberish would sound like Spanish to a non-native speaker.
Interesting, never thought about that.
Wait.
Why was I searching up gibberish?
It’s dark outside now.
But at least I know I’m not beholden to a rhyming scheme.
I don’t have to use perfect grammar
and I’m most likely okay to use the term ‘ode’.
Day two now,
Me and my ADHD where to begin?
It fuels my creativity and sparks my ignition.
Wait.
Can an ignition be sparked? Or does the ignition do the sparking?
Wait.
Should I just have one question mark for the above question?
It’s kind of the same question.
I use the word ‘or’, can a question be started with ‘or’?
Okay, thanks GPT, one question mark, I knew that anyway, it looked weird.
Wait.
I forgot to ask about the ignition thing.
According to GPT
the ignition system is responsible for generating a spark (in gasoline engines)
or for heating (in diesel engines) to start the combustion process.
Wait.
Isn’t diesel named after someone?
According to GPT
Rudolf Diesel created the first diesel engine.
Although he didn’t invent diesel itself
so that seems weird. Why is it called diesel?
According to GPT
Diesel is named after Mr Diesel because the stuff wasn’t in widespread use
before old Rudolf invented his engine.
which by the way, could run on coal dust and peanut oil.
So why his name somehow got attributed to the fuel is a mystery
Wait.
What was diesel called before Rudolf?
I mean, he was using diesel for his as-yet-unnamed diesel engine,
so what was the fuel called?
According to GPT
Diesel was called heavy oil, gas oil, or fuel oil.
Wait.
Who invented the petrol engine?
According to GPT
A guy called Nickolas Otto invented the first petrol engine,
so it seems to me, that Mr Otto got stiffed.
If we are to follow the logic of diesel’s nomenclatorial history.
We should all be filling our tanks with ‘Otto’.
Wouldn’t that be weird?
Well no, it wouldn’t because we’d all be used to it by now
In fact, the word ‘petrol’ would sound strange.
Wait.
It’s three AM now, and apart from having a newfound knowledge
surrounding the intricacies of the internal combustion engine.
My Wergle, my ode to my ADHD, is not going well.
Okay, tomorrow I’m back with a vengeance!
Okay, it’s been a week now,
where was I?
Oh yes, me and my ADHD.
Though reading back through, is this a poem or the ramblings of a madman?
Although, doesn’t that sum up poetry, ramblings of men gone mad?
Wait.
Weren’t all the greats mad?
According to GPT
I need to brush up on my political correctness;
mad is no longer an acceptable way of referring to someone
with mental health issues.
Showing my age I suppose.
I’m definitely going to get cancelled at some point.
Anyway, Keats, Bryon and Poe,
Plath, Woolf, and Lowell,
were all struck by the melancholic malaise that plagued the poetic souls of
the Victorian era.
Though Sylvia Plath was born in the thirties,
but that’s not very poetic
and her name works perfectly in that sentence so it stays.
According to GPT
Sylvia Plath died from su***de.
Now I feel like a dick for including her in my ‘mad list’.
My daughter’s right, I am “sooooo going to get cancelled.”
I was cool once,
I used words out of context,
Like, safe, life, wicked
and word.
Wait.
Where was I?
Oh yes, the Victorian era, when did it start and end?
According to GPT
1837 to 1901,
so that rules out Byron and Keats as well,
but I’m writing a poem, when better to use poetic license?
Wait.
Did the term poetic license actually come from poetry?
According to GPT
it did.
I wonder what an actual poetic license would look like.
(Do I sound young by overusing the word actual?)
That would probably make a good social media post.
I should write out a poetic license as a social media post.
Should I type it straight into Facebook?
Or should I type it and then screenshot it so I can put it on Twitter?
Maybe I should open up a doc. It’s not a serious thing though,
it’s just a social media post.
Right, well, that took a lot longer than I thought
and wasn’t nearly as funny.
Okay, Me and my ADHD.
Where should I start?
Behold, it is the East
And My ADHD is the sun
Wait.
I once heard that a photon can take a million years to escape the sun
How can that be?
According to GPT
In a process often described as a "random walk"
photons undergo countless scatterings and absorptions
by particles within the Sun's dense interior.
Thus they can take a million years to reach the photosphere,
Wait.
I have to return that bloody chair to Amazon
It didn’t come with enough screws to put it together
And now it’s just sitting there. Mocking me.
We both know I’m not going to return it.
According to Amazon
I’ve got until the tenth of March to activate my return,
I’ll do it later
Now I’m thinking about buying a microscope
I tried a telescope, but they’re harder to use than you’d think
For a start, the lens is tiny and the damn Earth is spinning so bloody quickly
So when you do finally manage to get something in focus
that may or may not be Saturn
The thing has moved and now you can’t find it
And whilst I thought looking at impossibly distant stars,
the Moon and the rings of Saturn would be amazing
It’s not.
Anyway,
This digital microscope costs less than a hundred,
that can’t be good, can it?
According to the twenty-seven four-star, Amazon reviews
It can be, and is in fact,
very good.
However, I want one that is powerful enough to see things
like individual s***m and plant cells. Can it do that?
According to GPT
I need at least four hundred times magnification to see an individual s***m.
The digital one reckons it can magnify up to twelve hundred times,
but for some reason, I still don’t trust it.
Maybe because I was born in a time of lenses
and big round adjuster k***s
Not touch screens
and virtual control thingies.
Where was I?
Oh yes, back to my ADHD.
But now I have a million things in my head, all vying for attention,
Goods to return, bills to be paid,
microscopes to be scoped
and chores to be…
Chored?
Oh s**t, the dog!
The dog needs a walk, that’s nice and simple.
Clear my head of all of the detritus
I think the dog understands my ADHD.
Two weeks later,
Today is the eleventh of March
I didn’t make the Amazon return (as painful, as it was predictable)
However, I am now the official owner of a broken office chair
So,
glass half full?
I hate returns.
Okay, another week gone by now, where to start?
Me and my ADHD
I feel like I’ve lost momentum
Am I only continuing this charade,
to avoid the dreaded question?
So how’s that poem going, that you were really into last time I saw you?
To be honest, with myself, as much as you
I simply
Lost
Interest.
Oh s**t! The deadline is tomorrow.
Wait.
I think I’ve summed up my ADHD
