SO IT'S FINALLY COME TO THIS: HAIKU

So, one of my neighbors and fellow victims of the friendly neighborhood Bizarro ----way surprised me the other day with this unsolicited haiku e-mail:

Pharmacist peers out
Across mounds of slick, brown fruit.
He's got your number!

Imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, I responded in kind:

Brown, black, puce, ochre
Misshapen mounds of produce
Bring your ----way card!

and then, in honor of the beheaded cardboard cutout...

No shoes, no T-shirt?
Then no service, warns the sign.
No head, though, seems fine.

The problem with haikus, of course, is that like crack and reality television, once you start doing them, it's often hard to stop. My friends responded with these gems, including a rare double haiku:

Winged insects swarming
Inside a bag of brown rice
Make crunchy pilaf!

A pumpkin so soft
A toddler inserts a straw
And extracts brown mush.
"Brown ice cream!" she laughs.
"Can we take this pumpkin home?
It would be tasty."

Which led to this round of poesy:

Crunchy, chewy -- yuk!
What's this squirming sensation?
Larvae in my rice.

Choose a banana,
Finger goes right through the peel.
Time for a refund!

Even my wife, who has actually written some actual poetry that doesn't even rhyme, couldn't resist the hypnotic lure of 5-7-5, particularly when considering current events:

Sorry, Mister Prez,
Those ---way special pretzels
Were too much for you.

Speaking of which, I must say that I'd hate to see a major setback in the war against terruh caused by, of all things, a salty lump of dough (though I suspect retaliatory airstrikes against Hanover, Pa., will begin within days and not stop until the evildoers from Utz are smoked from their caves). Imagine what that would look like on a trading card!