Category: Podcast

Do you walk to school? Ride your bike? Take the bus? Or does your mom drive you to school?

Where else does she drive you? Do you play a sport or take lessons after school? If you want to go to the store to buy something, does she drive you there?

When I was a kid, I almost always walked to school or rode my bike. In fact, I think my mom only drove me to school or picked me up from school once or twice the whole time I was growing up.

Now and then she would drive me and my brothers to the movies or something else we wanted to do, but most of the time we would still walk, ride our bikes, or take the bus.

When I grew up and had kids of my own, my wife and I found out just how much time parents spend driving their kids places. We even jokingly called her car “Mom’s Taxi Service” because she was constantly driving the kids somewhere.

I’m not saying you need to walk everywhere instead of asking your mom for a ride to soccer practice or the mall, but I am saying that you probably shouldn’t whine if she says no. And when she does give you a ride, it’s a good idea to remember to say thank you.

My Mother Drives Me Everywhere

My mother drives me everywhere.
She drives me to my school.
She drives me to my football practice
and the swimming pool.

She drives me to piano lessons,
and my English tutor.
She drives me to the mall to get
new games for my computer.

She’d rather that I rode my bike,
or walked, or took the bus.
But if she doesn’t drive me
I just whine and make a fuss.

I’d get around without her but
I’m really much too lazy.
My mother drives me everywhere
and I just drive her crazy.

—Kenn Nesbitt

I love chocolate. Don’t you? I mean, doesn’t everybody? When I was a kid, my favorite Halloween treats were always chocolate candy bars like Hershey’s, Snickers, and Three Musketeers. After Halloween night, I always ate those ones first. After a few days, all that was left were the candies I didn’t like.

I’ve heard that chocolate is healthy, but I have no idea if that’s true or not. In any case, I’m pretty sure it’s not healthy to eat nothing but chocolate for a week.

If you like chocolate as much as I do, I hope you enjoy this poem. I also hope you make sure to eat your fruits and veggies and other healthy foods after Halloween.

Chocolate for Breakfast

Chocolate for breakfast.
Chocolate for lunch.
Chocolate for dinner.
Chocolate for brunch.

Chocolate on Saturday,
chocolate on Sunday,
and nothing but chocolate
the whole day on Monday.

On Tuesday and Wednesday
it’s chocolate galore.
On Thursday and Friday
I eat even more.

I know it’s not healthy;
that’s totally clear.
But, still, I go nuts in
November each year.

And there’s not a fruit
or a veggie in sight
at least for a week
after Halloween night.

—Kenn Nesbitt

There’s a word game I like to play now and then called “Change One Letter.” The object of the game is to change a word, one letter at a time, to make it morph into a completely different word. Each time you change a letter, the result must still be a real word.

For example, if I wanted to change the word NOSE into HAND, I could do it by changing NOSE to NONE, NONE to BONE, BONE to BANE, BANE to BAND, and, finally, BAND to HAND. If you would like to try this with any pair of four-letter words, try this Multi-Word Morph tool on wordplays.com.

I find it interesting how many words in English are just one letter different. While thinking about writing a Halloween poem, I noticed that the words “lemon” and “demon” are spelled the same except for the first letter. So, thinking about demons got me thinking about lemons.

At first, I thought it might be funny if someone dressed up as a lemon, thinking they were dressing as a scary demon, but I couldn’t find a way to make that work as a poem. As I continued thinking about demons and lemons, I was reminded of the old expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Change a couple of letters and, presto!, you’ve got a whole new saying, perfect for a Halloween poem.

On Halloween Night

A couple of demons,
on Halloween night,
showed up on my doorstep
to give me a fright.

I smiled when I saw them.
I gave them a wink,
and handed them each
a delicious, cold drink.

You might think it’s weird
but I wasn’t afraid.
When life gives me demons
I make demonade.

—Kenn Nesbitt

Every October, I love to write a few monster poems and Halloween poems. This one is a fun little story about what would happen if an ogre came to your house for dinner.

When I write, I often like to play with the rhythm of the words and the rhyme scheme of the poem. If you look at each stanza, you’ll see that the rhythm is the same as that of a limerick, and the rhyme scheme is almost the same as a limerick, except that the first line doesn’t rhyme with the second and fifth lines. This is the same rhyme scheme and rhythm I recently used in a poem called “I Washed Our Dad’s Car,” which I describe as “almost a limerick.”

If you are interested in how poems are written, you might also notice several other poetic techniques I used in this poem, such as alliteration and onomatopoeia.

But, mainly, I just hope you enjoy the story and remember to never let an ogre in your house, even if they bring you cake and ice cream.

An Ogre Came Over for Dinner

An ogre came over for dinner.
He showed up with ice cream and cake.
We thought, “It can’t hurt,
since he brought us dessert,”
so we asked him to join us for steak.

He crushed the first chair that he sat on.
He busted the table in two.
He ranted and raved
and was badly behaved,
like a rhino escaped from the zoo.

He smashed every plate in the kitchen.
He shattered each saucer and cup.
He broke every bowl.
He was out of control
as he ran around tearing things up.

He broke all the beds in our bedrooms.
He even demolished a door.
He cracked all the walls
in the stairways and halls,
and he left several holes in the floor.

And when he was done causing damage,
although we all wanted to scream,
he said, “That was fun
but I really must run.
I hope you enjoy the ice cream.”

—Kenn Nesbitt

Goats are incredibly curious creatures. They love to explore their surroundings and chew on the things they find. If you put your hand near a goat’s mouth, it might even chew on your sleeve to see what it tasted like. This has led to the idea that goats will eat anything, including garbage and tin cans.

In fact, a park in the city where I live, Spokane, Washington, even has a statue of a garbage-eating goat with a built-in vacuum cleaner that will suck up any trash you hold in front of its mouth.

Spokane Garbage Goat

While it isn’t true that goats will literally eat tin cans, they might nibble on one just to see what it was. If a goat found his way into a garbage dump or landfill, he might not find much actual food, but he would probably nibble on a lot of things he was curious about.

In his book Something Big Has Been Here, Jack Prelutsky wrote a poem called “A Goat Wandered into a Junkyard” about a goat who ate enough used car parts to eventually cough up an automobile.

Recently, I got to thinking about what other things a goat might eat and what that might lead to. For example, if it ate a computer or a smartphone, might it connect to the internet and become the world’s smartest goat? (I didn’t use that idea because it was too similar to my poem “My Brother Ate My Smartphone.”)

What if it ate your homework? (I didn’t use that idea because I’ve already written quite a few poems about homework being eaten, including “My Dog Ate My Homework” and “My Teacher Ate My Homework.”)

Finally, I wondered what would happen if it ate a book or a movie. Would it enjoy the story? And that led to the idea for this poem.

A Goat in a Landfill

A goat was in a landfill
eating garbage and debris
and came across a movie;
a discarded DVD.

He chewed the case and cover
and the flavor made him smile.
He took the disc between his lips
and nibbled for a while.

He thought, “This film is brilliant;
full of action and suspense.
The story is exciting
and the fight scenes are intense.

“It’s got a lot of comedy,
a touch of sweet romance,
and music so inspiring
it makes me want to dance.”

He gnawed a little longer
through some drama and a chase,
and finished off the movie
with a grin upon his face.

He gulped the closing credits —
one more bite was all it took —
and thought, “That film was awesome
but I still preferred the book.”

—Kenn Nesbitt

The word “hot dog” is a is an interesting one with several different meanings. Most commonly, it is another word for a frankfurter or wiener. Frankfurter, by the way, means “from Frankfurt.” Frankfurt is a city in Germany. Similarly, wiener means “from Vienna.” Vienna is a city in Austria. So, the words frankfurter and wiener are short for Frankfurt sausage and Vienna sausage.

But “hot dog” also has other meanings. You can describe an athlete – especially a surfer or skier – who is a bit of a show-off as a hot dog.

By the late 1800s, the word “hot dog,” in addition to meaning a frankfurter, also became a slang expression that people used to show they were excited. In other words, saying “hot dog!” means the same thing as saying “oh boy!” or “excellent!” Not too long after that, in the 1920’s, the phase was extended as “hot diggity dog” as a way of showing even more excitement.

When I heard this phrase recently, it occurred to me that dogs often like to dig holes in the garden or lawn, and that all that digging might cause them to get pretty hot, which is where the idea for this poem came from.

My Dog Likes to Dig

My dog likes to dig, making holes in our lawn.
He digs every morning beginning at dawn.
He digs like a maniac all afternoon,
and even at night by the light of the moon.

I wish he would stop but he’s out of control,
and works up a sweat digging hole after hole.
He’s fevered and frenzied. He’s hot as can be.
His temperature’s rising degree by degree.

His workout from digging is clearly extreme.
He’s sizzling. He’s scorching. He’s starting to steam.
I wish I had gotten a fish or a frog.
Instead I just have this hot diggity dog.

I love a good joke and I love a good limerick. This poem isn’t quite a limerick because the first line doesn’t rhyme with the second and fifth lines, but it’s close; it has the same rhythm and length, and almost the same rhyme scheme. So, it’s almost a limerick.

And it’s also a pretty good joke, if I do say so myself. At a recent school visit, I recited this poem to a group of third and fifth graders. The fifth graders all got it right away. It took some of the third graders a minute, but once they got it, they all laughed.

If you’re in third grade or younger and you don’t get the joke, feel free to ask a parent or older sibling to explain it. Once you get the joke, I think you’ll laugh too.

By the way, if you like this poem, I think you’ll also like my poems “I Miss My Sister” and “My Teacher Ate My Homework,” which have similarly surprising endings.

I Washed Our Dad’s Car

I washed our dad’s car with my sister,
to clean off the grime and the grunge.
My sister got mad and
complained to our dad and
asked, “Why can’t he just use a sponge?”

—Kenn Nesbitt

When I was in elementary school, I spent a lot of time learning to make silly faces and strange voices.

I taught myself how to wiggle my ears, raise one eyebrow at a time, and pucker my lips like a fish.

I learned how to talk like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and Dracula. I practiced purring and meowing to my cat. I even learned how to burp whenever I want.

About ten years ago, I even wrote an entire poem, called “My Excellent Education,” about all these crazy things I learned in school (even thought they weren’t what I was supposed to be studying). In fact, “My Excellent Education” is one of the few poems I’ve written that is almost entirely true.

Today’s poem, “I’ve Started Learning Honkish,” is specifically about the kinds of noises I liked to make–mooing, honking, burping, and so on—plus a bunch more that I just made up.

I even gave them names. I mean, if Spanish is what they speak in Spain, Norwegian is what they speak in Norway, and Chinese is what they speak in China, why can’t you speak Burpish, Snorwegian, and Garglese?

If you like this poem, why not see if you can invent a few new languages from the crazy sounds you can make and maybe even add a stanza or two of your own to this poem?

I’ve Started Learning Honkish

I’ve started learning Honkish.
It’s my favorite language now.
I’m also learning Mooish.
I can speak just like a cow.

I’m learning Chirpish, Burpish,
Beepish, yes, and Sneezanese,
and a dialect of Buzzish
so I sound just like the bees.

My dad taught me Snorwegian,
plus some Ancient Garglese,
and I’m fluent in a dozen other
languages like these.

I’m something of prodigy
where language is concerned,
except for ones the language teacher
says I should have learned.

She tried to teach me Spanish,
French, and German, but I’m lazy.
And, anyway, I’d rather learn
the ones that drive her crazy.

—Kenn Nesbitt