Half a dozen friends of mine live in a group house called Friendship Village. The first time I hung out with them as a group, I wrote a Chinese poem for them all to express my gratitude at meeting such lovely new friends.
About a year later, after a joyous night of homemade pizza at Friendship Village, I decided to write poems for each of them. A week later my project was complete. I hand-wrote the poems on cards, and delivered them at Ian's going-away party on 2019-06-13.
I tried and tried, but couldn't come up with a poem for Fedora. Instead, I made for her a bite-size videogame called Fedoradventure, which you can play online. Though not a poem, Fedoradventure still belongs to the Friendship Village series.
A cottage on a hill
A flower patch
A tree of fruit
A mound of herbs
A bunch of beans
A pile of plerp
A bag of blegg
A tin of twomp
A sack of snoob
And a sign out front, big-lettered:
WITCHY WONDERS
"CHAOS, MADE TO ORDER"
Hand-painted
Wholesome winter scenes on
Christmas cards.
How? How does
Someone come to wield such
Skill at arts?
Long, hard work
And a smile for all the
"Not-quite-rights."
No other
Way to learn to paint such
Winter sights.
To me you come off as the coolest housemate
Can it be true that you're the illest villager?
Skate on home, then rouse up that guitar rumpus
"Cool" is too weak: from now on you're a chillager
You've gotta take yourself into battle.
You've gotta do your sick moves -- every last one, even if it kills you. But you can't let it kill you, because you've gotta win. You've gotta
Kill.
That.
Elf.
You're gonna put on your elf-fighting suit and ride into battle, and if you retreat, so help me Space God, I will shoot you myself. I don't care how afraid you are, or how pissed your pants are, or how good you are at fighting in the gaseous-metal atmosphere of this planet: you've gotta do it anyway, you've g-o-t-t-a
The publication date of this snippet is an approximation; I only recall that it was some time in fall or winter 2018, on an evening with these friends.
"It's dark outside, and I'm Spider-Man," said Spider-Man. "I am here for those of you who have suffered from CRIME."
The citizens of New York were distraught. "The person who crimed us is Stan Lee!"
"It can't be," said Spider-Man. His web-shooters flexed. His butt clenched. "It can't be."
But it was.