Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White and I'm filling in once again for David Kern.

David told me today that he got several emails over the last few days asking him,

what's up? Why aren't you on the daily poem? So here's the thing. David is sick. He's going to recover. It's nothing serious, but he does have

the flu, and his entire family has had the flu. So it's pretty dire over there. So in David's

honor, I'm going to read a classic poem about being sick. Sick by Shell Silverstein.

I cannot go to school today, said little Peggy Ann McKay.

I have the measles and the mumps, a gash, a rash, and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet.

My throat is dry.

I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks. I have counted 16 chicken pox. And there's one more. That's 17. And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut. My eyes are blue. It might be insomatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke. I'm sure

that my left leg is broke. My hip hurts when I move my chin. My belly buttons caving in. My back is

wrenched. My ankle sprained. My appendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold. My toes are numb.

I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff. My spine is weak. I hardly whisper when I speak.

My tongue is filling up my mouth. I think my hair is falling out. My elbows bent. My spine ain't straight.

My temperature is 108. My brain is shrunk. I cannot hear. There's a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail

and my heart is what? What's that? What's that you say? You say today is Saturday? Goodbye. I'm going out to play.

This poem is one of the classics of childhood. Shell Silverstein has this uncanny ability to capture the

internal world of a child in his delightful poems. And many of them,

like this one, are very well written too. You can hear, I'm not going to spend too much time

talking about the technicalities because really these poems are just for fun. But one thing about

this poem is it's written in couplets. So two lines in a row that rhyme with each other.

And nowadays, that couplet form, a poem made entirely of couplets, usually lends itself more to humorous poetry.

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