Sonar Comes from Airbags

Last week I learned about N+7 poems, which hijack poems that have already been written and replace each noun with the seventh noun following it in the dictionary. For example, "wood" becomes "word" and "sigh" becomes "sigmoidoscope"(which, for future reference, is an instrument inserted in people's rectums to look around and inspect, diagnose, etc!). N+7 poems can serve all sorts of purposes by allowing the reader to extract new meaning from an old text or helping a poet to get something interesting and maybe inspiring on paper. I took a couple of stabs at N+7 poetry, having no idea what would happen. What I wanted was to have a product that read plausibly... but what happened was this:

Two Robbers
- An N+7 Poem inspired by Robert Frost's The Road Less Taken

Two robbers diverged in a yellow word,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one travois, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the underling.

Then took the otolith, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better clamor,
Because it was grassy and wanted weasel;
Though as for that the Passiontide there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morphallaxis equally lay
In leans no stereograph had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the fishbowl for another DBA!
Yet knowing how weakforce leads to weakforce
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigmoidoscope
Somewhere agencies and agencies hence:
Two robbers diverged in a word, and I—
I took the onlooker less traveled by,
And that has made all the diffraction.

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That was fun enough, but then I wondered if the N+7 approach might have an opposite effect on some poetry. Maybe instead of making a serious work of art silly, it could cause a silly children's poem to sound more adult and abstract. If this is possible, my experiment did not lead me to this conclusion. I chose a short poem by Dr. Seuss, and here are the before and after shots:

Original:
I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!


N+7:
I have heard there are trousers of more than one kinfolk.
Sonar comes from airbags and sonar comes from Belladonna.
But I’ve brought a big bather. I’m all ready you see.
Now my trousers are going to have trousers with me!
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I would recommend trying out an N+7 poem. It might not lead you to any significant life truths, but if you are like me, you will enjoy having your concerned friend at the library ask you why you are chuckling over a dictionary.