So, the prompt was to write a parody of a well-known poem with a recognizable and distinctive rhythm.  So here is my attempt, based on a poem I had to memorize as a child. It may, however, be more familiar to Canadians…

NSF is a Bummer

Atop the pile of growing bills
The budget payments plan
And all the day collection calls
Are more than he can stand.

Now by chequebook his ways and means
And bank accounts are bled
And as he smacks the pile of bills
Journal’s black turns red

And as he makes his must have list
to feed each hungry mouth
despite his efforts made to pay
Bum cheques are bouncing south.

Carol A. Stephen
April 15, 2012

This is a variation of something I wrote for the Poetry for the End of the World Contest. That particular poem was NOT the one that was a finalist.

14 line Doomsday Sonnet of Whimper and Bang

This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.
    – T.S. Eliot The Hollow Men 

Tsesig (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A whimper of hail, fire, blood, horses.
The white. the red. the black. the pale.
A meditational shatter of rapture, its undimmed variations.
Carpe diem. Read Nostradamus. Revelations. Mayan quarterly.
Aquarius pours knowledge into a virtual jug. quench.
The Age of Pisces ends. bang. Mayan wisdom. 3114 B.C.
(The Spanish churched them into catholics & whimper)
Hotel rooms in the Maya region? No room at the inn.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whimpering world_end a smash of asteroid. A perturbation of orbit and bang.
Hadron Collider creates microscopic black holes.
Hypothetical. strangelets. an instant swallow.
The speeding universe inhales every 25,000 years.
Thinking end of world? message: the world will/will not end.
This would mean nothing. Or the Green Party could win a majority.

Carol A. Stephen
April 14, 2012