Wednesday’s poetry corner.

I am going back to Ogden Nash this week because I am sick and this poem sums up pretty much how I feel. I spent 35 minutes waiting for the doctor who spent less then 5 minute with me to tell me what I already knew. I have bronchitis with asthma. He prescribed antibiotics and if I am still feeling bad in four days I get to go on steroids. I don’t want to go on steroids so I really hope I am feeling better. I hope you enjoy Ogden’s poem “The Common Cold.” Taken from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/325.html

Go hang yourself, you old M.D,!

You shall not sneer at me.

Pick up your hat and stethoscope,

Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;

I contemplate a joy exquisite

In not paying you for your visit.

I did not call you to be told

My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;

By fever's hot and scaly grip;

By those two red redundant eyes

That weep like woeful April skies;

By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;

By handkerchief after handkerchief;

This cold you wave away as naught

Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!

Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;

The Cold of which researchers dream,

The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.

This honored system humbly holds

The Super-cold to end all colds;

The Cold Crusading for Democracy;

The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals

Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,

But bred by scientists wise and hoary

In some Olympic laboratory;

Bacteria as large as mice,

With feet of fire and heads of ice

Who never interrupt for slumber

Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!

Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;

Don Juan was a budding gallant,

And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;

The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,

And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.

Oh what a derision history holds

For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

-- Ogden Nash