Juggling Giggles and Washing Machine Jiggles

Happy International Jugglers Day!  Today, we celebrate the impressive art of juggling. People have been practicing the skill of keeping two or more objects in the air at a time-- alternately tossing and catching them-- for centuries. Over the years, talented jugglers have juggled multi-colored balls, dinner plates, and metal rings.  And skilled jugglers have juggled dangerous objects like heavy clubs, sharpened swords, and flaming sticks.  Don't try this at home.  
Today's juggling poem is an example of light verse.  Light verse is generally short, often funny, and almost always full of creative rhyme, word play, and alliteration-- the repetition of first consonant sounds in words and phrases  We like the poem, but we don't recommend: 

Juggling with Gerbils 

Don't juggle with a gerbil

No matter what the thrill

For gerbils when they're jiggled

Can end up feeling ill.

It makes them all bad tempered

And then they'd like to kill

Those gerbil-juggling jugglers

Juggling gerbils till they're ill. 

Brian Patten

Today, we also celebrate the convenience, the cleanliness, and the cleverness of the... laundromat!  The very first washateria opened on April 18, 1936, in Fort Worth, Texas. Today's Laundromat Day poem makes good use of onomatopoeia, words that imitate sounds associated with the objects or actions they name: 

Our Washing Machine

Our washing machine went wishity whirr

Whisity whisity whisity whirr

One day at noon it went whisity click

Whisity whisity whisity click

Click grr click grr click

Call the repairman

Fix it... Quick! 

-- Patricia Hubbell

Happy Laundromat Day, Poetry Paraders.  Remember: poetry is coin-operated, fully automated, and open twenty-four hours a day!