It can’t be done…or can it?

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
~ Chinese proverb
One of my colleagues, the beautiful and talented Miss Sara, who is a graduate student pursuing a masters degree in writing, challenged me this morning to write a poem. I know what you’re thinking - “That doesn’t sound like much of a challenge,” and ordinarily you’d be right. The challenging part was to write this poem without using any letters, only punctuation. Ahhhh, I see that you are intrigued – “It can’t be done!” you say – actually, I wrote three, but I can only get two of them to look right in this heavily Html format. I thought I’d share them with y’all:

Hammering in a nail (and hitting your thumb)

!…. !…. !…. !…
!…. !…. !…. !…
!…. !…. !…. !…
!…. !…. #..$@!!&!
…… : (


Stubbed toe on the way to the bathroom – in the dark

..?.?….?……?….
?…?…..?..?…..?.
…?…..?..?…….?.
?….?.?…?….?.…
..?….?..?…!.F@!#!!
. . . . . :’ (


OK, so I cheated a little bit on the second one and used the letter "F", but you get the idea: you don't necessarily need letters and words to write a poem. Sara got the idea this morning from a book of poetry written by various Puerto Rican poets - such are our conversations around the copying machine in the morning. We don't get paid much, but it is fun working with intelligent and creative people (by the way, I had my class study Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to the American people this morning -
http://www.un.int/iran/pressaffairs/pressreleases/2006/articles/13.htm
- some fascinating reading!).