♥ Conventional Doggerel ♥

I memorize Michael’s and gobble up Gerber,

and feel I am getting somewhere,

Then Negative Doubles and New Minor Forcing,

Fill me with gloom and doom and despair.

Conventions, conventions, conventions all day,

I read till my eyes are in trouble,

And still when I’m asked I haven’t a clue,

What it means when I hear “Takeout Double.”

I’m  battered by Blackwood and so full of Splinters,

I feel I’ve been punched in the nose,

And given a quiz on that Lebensohl guy,

I haven’t a clue what “slow shows.”

So when my opponents stare back in pity,

While asking “what’s wrong with you?”

My eyes grow all misty, my lips go all twisty,

As I mumble “I bungled Weak Two.”

Though there’s a convention I love and obey,

Known as Unusual No Trump,

When I try to bid it the other guys yell,

“That’s not how its done, Mr. Gump.”

         I climbed a mountain named “25   Conventions”,

and looked down at the world from on high,

Then Pete told me “still, there are 25 more,”

And ran when I started to cry.

Though Pete’s a good teach I don’t understand,

When he claims that this game is all logical,

Deep in my heart I’m thoroughly convinced,

He’s just being all pedagogical.

Still I stand firm and seek to stay humble,

There’s no way my ego gets swollen,

I spoke with a nurse to halt my Reverse,

She told me “go clean out your Smolen.”

So day after day I play and I play,

And though it was never intentional,

I’m working and striving but barely surviving,

As my game grows incurably conventional.

                                                                     April 2009