Here’s a link to a ton of POETS Day posts I’ve been writing over the last few months. I now have permission to mirror the posts at this site when I publish them elsewhere. That feature is coming back.
I’ve Been Promiscuous
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P.O.E.T.S. Day! The John Milton Edition.
Editor’s Note: There is some reproduction from an earlier version of this series. The P.O.E.T.S. Day has been picked up by another site to publish simultaneously and we are putting out best foot forward for the new audience. There will be some repeats in the short term, but all will balance out. Thanks for reading, both times.
Congratulations lads and lassies, despite the drudgery of the work week you’ve made it to Friday and the weekend is in sight. But we are not watchers, you and I. We are not mere witnesses to the unfolding of our destinies. We do not wait for the weekend. We seize it. It’s time for a P.O.E.T.S. Day – Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.
So fake a cough, “twist your ankle,” or just slip out of the office quietly. No one will think the less of you for a lie or minor property destruction in the cause of sidling up to a bar a few hours early.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day with the Perverted Algernon Charles Swinburne!
Once again we celebrate P.O.E.T.S. Day: Piss Of Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. This is the glorious dawn of a new weekend and there you are stuck in an office, nurse’s station, or aromatic – but contrary to the ends of freedom and self determination – bakery. You owe The Man nothing. This is your life. Weasel your way out of work early and hit the bar. We’ll have something cool and inviting in a pint/rocks/wine glass waiting for you.
This week’s gambit for escaping the workplace involves a length of kite string (not fishing wire!) three unbent bottlecaps, a C battery, and a sachet of thyme, rosemary, flat leaf parsley, and basil but feel free to substitute marjoram if that’s your preference. I think it’s pretty obvious where I’m going here so I won’t bore you with the details. Timing is everything though. Get the timing right and you are out of the drudgery of employment and running headlong into the joys of fellowship, comradery, potent potables, and Jeopardy on the big screen in no time flat. Good luck. It’s in the timing.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day! The John Masefield Edition!
Get out. Escape. Lie. Cheat. Key a car. Whatever you have to do to get out of work and start your weekend early must be on the table. Nothing beyond a misdemeanor should be discounted unless you are slightly more than moderately sure you can get away with it.
It’s P.O.E.T.S. Day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday, and my bar is stocked and ready with cold beer on a new tap system, an in-the-midst-of-being-overhauled wine list with some impressive new selections, and a smattering of liquors all guaranteed to ease the burdens of modern life, unless you get whiny or violent when you drink. We’ll have none of that, thank you very much.
Loquacious is good. A few glasses of wine and you become a raconteur? Please and welcome. Keep it upbeat though and make sure that the tv (television) can still be heard over your voice or the baseball nuts will get angry. We value a polite interaction at our bar.
Speaking of politeness, this week’s featured poet was so polite that he not only provided me a facile but ultimately corny segue from the “This is P.O.E.T.S. Day” schtick to the “about the poet” bit, he also included a self-addressed stamped envelope with every submission he sent to a publication so they would not be occasioned a cost to send him an acceptance or refusal letter. He did this even when he was Poet Laureate of England.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day: Carl Sandburg, a Recommended Selection from Our Peanut Gallery
From the Hibernian heights, we take the finest of fictional (as far as I know) semi-holidays from the sage raconteur Sir (if he’s not he should be) Ian Rankin whose detective characters revealed the beauty of P.O.E.T.S. Day – Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. The weekend is yours and all the more so if you claim it early, so emulate the denizens of his award winning books and seize the day, early. After all, the Scots have done quite a bit for us.
Get yourself out of the office, away from the construction site, skip a vote in the Texas legislature with a few cases of beer in your carry-on, or tell your patients that it’s probably just a cold and you’ll check with them on Monday. Declare the workweek over and grab a seat at my bar.
This may require subterfuge. Frequent readers of these electronic pages will have already gotten past the moral quandary that arises on P.O.E.T.S. Day. The lies necessary for a successful escape are watter off their backs by this point, but that may not be true for those new to the site.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day! “I’m at the Beach” Edition Featuring the Inestimable Gerard Manley Hopkins!
Welcome to it, the one, the only – except where people are doing it other places – realization that life is short and meant to be enjoyed. Moments savored are the bread and butter of poetry and moments working are decidedly less savory. So break free and embrace the P.O.E.T.S. Day ethos: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!
This editions invites you to release your inner sun worshipping and bad tattoo spotting urges that so often we reserve for the occasional retreat to the coast. Things are different at the beach. Beer is generally acceptable with lunch in the real world. It’s a-okay for breakfast here.
Unstrap yourself from the desk, tell the boss that you can’t get the part for whatever flugenator or semi-disfusation unit until Monday, tell the supervisor you have an oncoming bout of dysentery, whatever you have to do to get away and start your weekend early.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day! John Banister Tabb
It’s that time again. From the Scottish midlands or wherever Edinburgh lies, we bring you another P.O.E.T.S. Day – Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.
So gird your loins and set your best poker face. It’s time to get out of work a few hours before closing and get yourself to a bar, but that’s going to require a moderate lie. Don’t worry about the morality of lying. They’re the ones taking your weekend from you. All you are doing is reclaiming your time from the workaday usurpers.
Did you just get a call from someone who found your beloved lost dog? You did? That’s great. Your boss would have to be Scrooge not to let you go pick up Fido immediately. Did your neighbor just call to let you know that your dog was just hit by a car? She did? Bereft and hollowed you have to go right away. The latter works best if you don’t have a dog. Try the former when dogless and you may later have to come up with lies to cover your original lie and it gets complicated.
Keep it simple. Come join us at the bar. Jeopardy starts at three.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day! That One I Still Remember From Second Grade Or Whatever!
“One bright day in the middle of the night…”
A lot of you of a certain age and Catholic education will recognize that line from a poem. It was required curriculum, at least in my diocese growing up and I doubt there was much variation reaching outward.
It’s a stupid poem to anyone with an ounce of sense, but kids have nothing approaching such. I memorized this ditty almost forty years ago and still remember it. There wasn’t even an assignment to learn it. I just loved it. So did my friends and we’d race through it by rote, trying to see who couldn’t recite it quickly and then descend on that poor child like those bat eared things from Galaxy Quest that were out for Guy’s blood. But that was the early eighties: stupid funny poems, lawn darts, pit bulls, and Africanized honey bees. Kristy McNichols though… dude. There was an upside.
So it’s P.O.E.T.S. Day!
Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday! Get your ass out of work. Lie, cheat, steal, fake minor (don’t go overboard or there will be required explanations) injuries. I don’t think pit bulls or killer bees are going to work but a lawn dart injury to a near relative is pretty special and not outside the realm of possibilities. If there’s a temptation to lie to the higher ups by pretending you need to leave for a date with McNichols I’m in your corner and so would most people that remember Madonna’s debut album, but it’s been a long time since Little Darlings. Know your audience.
Continue readingP.O.E.T.S. Day! Byron, and No, I Won’t Concede to Call Him Lord
I won’t call him Lord because of this painting.
He looks like a goof – a runner up on Star Search goof. This is the first superstar? That’s no Lord.
I almost forgot the required stuff. Back to the goof in a sec.
It’s P.O.E.T.S. Day! Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday! Get thee from thy workplace verily!
You can’t help but see all before you covered in blood and random Lego pieces. Obviously that’s not true, but if you tell your boss about the blood and Lego gambit it’s bound to get you out early and the weekend can begin.
Not up for the psychiatric follow up? Try a cold. We’re in the end stages of COVID but the least of viral symptoms still gets you an overblown license to absenteeism. Go Rahm on this. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Alternately there’s car trouble, gas leaks, emergency vasectomies, and all manner of other excuses. Bottom line: Get out of work early and sit yourself at my bar. I’m a heavy pourer.
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