Take Courage Little Minor Scribe

Take courage little minor scribe,
Who scribbleth ABCB,
Our Poet Laureate, you’ll find,
Can’t spell words such as Phoebe.

His punctuation leads him to
(When told, “The poet’s back”)
Assume the poet’s dorsal side
Is on the return track.

Or cruising past a grocery,
The verdant kind, I’ve stressed,
Perceives the apple’s, pear’s and plum’s
As Plural or Possessed.

And there an awful error’s made,
If with language, one’s obsessive;
They’re neither Plural nor Possessed
The Apostrophe’s Possessive.

That floating comma indicates,
Those fruits are not possessed;
It means they’re the possessors.
But here I have digressed.

For rules of language I adhere to
As to the Decalogue
For, “Once”, they say, “a Pedagogue;
Always a Pedagogue!”

His etymologic attempts,
Whilst sometimes quite bizarre,
Leave Mrs Malaprop’s mistakes
Not only back, but far.

Yes, far, far, far behind his lead;
His endeavours make one smile,
For trying to impress with words,
Feet fancier becomes a paedophile.

Or worse, much worse, his spelling
Seems sent, just to divert us,
For paedophile becomes pediophile
Arthritis becomes Arthuritis.

But still, this Poet Laureate,
To chastise my poor endeavour,
Remonstrates with me and says
I’m really less than clever.

“Never, never let me read
A poem with the verses
Exceeding four or five,” he says
“And more than that, the worse is”.

My doggerel’s too long again;
I really need a helper
And so I’ll beat my breast and cry,
“Mea Culpa! Mea Culpa! “

And if that isn’t quite enough
Just two of “Mea Culpa!”
(For three is the required amount);
I’ll add one “Mea Culpa!”