The Man from Planet X
His name is Rex from Planet X,
the man from outer space.
He loves to visit other worlds
and flies from place to place.
He always eats on Planet 8
and drinks on Planet T.
He’ll often golf on Planet 4
and sail on Planet C.
You’ll sometimes find him visiting
the Planet U-R-2,
or playing Hide and Seek with friends
on Planet I-C-U.
He always plays the lottery
on Planet O-I-1.
And goes to planet I-M-B-4-U-R
just for fun.
His favorite place to sleep is
Planet Z-Z-Z-Z-Z.
It’s best if you don’t ask me
what he does on Planet P.
— Kenn Nesbitt
Copyright © 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Reading Level: Grade 4
Topics: Poems about Kooky Characters, Science and Technology Poems, Space, Travel, Wordplay
Poetic Techniques: Descriptive Poems, List Poems, Wordplay
About This Poem
When I was a kid, I noticed that some letters and numbers are homophones (words that sound the same). For example 8 sounds like “ate,” 2 sounds like too, and C sounds like “see” or “sea.”
In fact, there is a famous rock group called U2, which sounds like “you too,” and another famous rock group called Van Halen once put out an album called OU812 (“Oh, you ate one too”). I once even saw a license plate on a car that read IMN210S (“I am into tennis”).
I’ve always loved this kind of wordplay—or should we call it “letterplay?”—and I thought it might be fun to see if I could write a poem using letter and number homophones. In fact a few years ago, I even created a list of letters and numbers that rhyme with each other so that I would be prepared when the time came to write such a poem.
I hope you like the result. And, by the way, if you like this sort of letterplay, here are a couple of other poems you might enjoy.
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