Today I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on Facebook, thus:

Wow, it’s been forever since our last Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest. This one here may be easier for anyone who’s been through a pregnancy.

A man and his pregnant companion are in the kitchen. “Wow, I’m hungry,” the man says. “I’m gonna make lunch. Want some?”His companion thinks about it, sniffs the air, makes a face, and says, “No thanks. I _______.”

Fill in the blank with a single seven-letter word that makes a truly wretched Bad Pun of this scenario, and if you’re the first one with the right answer, you win! Win what? We’ll see.Contest ends at one PM Mountain Standard Time, when I’ll disclose the answer, if there is no winner, or congratulate the winner and announce the prize, if someone has answered correctly.

Have fun, Friends!

Almost instantly I heard from Jessica Renee Ballantyne, a frequent flyer with my contests and the winner of the very first contest I had:

“No thanks I gestate.”
“No thanks I just ate”

This is, of course, the correct answer. Jessica went on to explain that she had independently invented, and employed, the Bad Pun when she herself was pregnant.

So I on-the-spotted her prize with this comment:

CONGRATULATIONS, Jess!!! Not only have you Won, you have Won Again! You are one Smart Cookie, with or without a Bun in the Oven!

We don’t have to wait till one PM. It’s my contest and I change rules at whim. So here’s your prize, if you choose to accept it, Jessica: If you provide me with a title, I will write three poems, using three different poetic forms, using the title you provide for each. If you specify a poetic form I will use it for one of the poems. (If you pick Ballade or Sestina it may take a couple of days!!)

If you don’t want to do this, that’s okay too. If that’s the case, your prize will be Bragging Rights.Again, congratulations!

Jess gave me the title “Starry Night” after the Van Gogh painting. So I first wrote a Sonnet.

****
Starry Night

Some see the stars as fixed but VVG
Lent vortices of motion with his paint:
Impasto in impassioned filigree
Illumes a humble town with unrestraint.

He saw stars in his brainstorms, some have said.
Photemic teeming of hallucination
Acquired in his lonely madman’s bed
With kinesthetic sight based on sensation.

But Truth is often found in an asylum,
Beatitude oft had with heart’s expression,
And metaphor turns blandness into ylem
The primal stuff we mix a batch of Fresh in.

The Starry Night sees Vincent’s flag unfurl:
Above a town, a tidal, Cosmic Whirl.
****

Next came a Senryu:

****
starry night

here i am says light
endlessly variable
in shifting array
****

Third and last was a Villanelle:

****
starry Night

“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.
“they full surround the sun, the earth, and me.
exploding, they birth elements gone wild.”

when chandrasekhar’s limit is defiled
massivity begets its potpourri.
“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.

“it’s sweet to think a kind Creator smiled
As pressure built and Chaos was set free–
Exploding, it loosed Elements, made wild.

“this starry Night, so temperately mild
includes some supernovae on a spree–
the stars more than ‘above,'” perceives the child.

“as gold is ringed and silicon is tiled,
as oxygen is tanked, we thank who be
exploring with those elements gone wild.”

the child descends the hill, her entry filed.
she spoke of starry Night, and Majesty.
the stars below, above, around the child
explode anew with meekness fused to Wild.
****

I was jazzed after finishing the poems, and thought I had enough juice left to do an illustration to the sonnet. It was true.

For Vincent’s face I used as source not one of his self-portraits, but rather one of the existing photographs of him. For the suggestion of his famous painting I found a photo of it in its frame at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it is part of their permanent collection.

Big thanks to Jessica, who kept me out of trouble and creatively productive all afternoon doing this project. I feel that this was the absolute best use of my time today, and I’m grateful to Jess for the inspiring title that made it so!