Under Where? (IPYPIASM Is HERE!)

Well, it’s that time of year again!  The time when both poets and non-poets alike venture forth from their studies and drawing rooms and take to the shops of the world to surreptitiously foist upon unsuspecting consumers their literary stylings:

IPYPIASM.

International Put Your Poem In A Shop Month is the brainchild of an Irish poet who also blogs here, and you can find more detail about IPYPIASM here.  (It’s been rumored that the practice actually goes back to the days of Joyce, whose meandering five-hundred-stanza poems would so confuse Dublin shop-goers in the early 1900s that many shopkeepers would simply close down for the whole of December.)

All that’s required is that you write a poem, put it clandestinely in a shop for others to read, snap a picture of it (Joyce would do wood carvings, I’m told), and post it out on the googlytubez to share.  It’s loads of fun, a little heart-quickening, and ultimately the most life-enriching thing you’ll do that day.  Such is the emotional peak that the moment at which you take the photo is often referred to as IPYPIGASM.

As always, I’m late to the party, but here’s my initial effort:

Above:  No, I don’t normally spend time in the boy’s underwear section.

The text of the “poem” is as follows:

A child awake all through the night,
awaiting Christmas morn’s delight.
A choo-choo train?  A pogo stick?
An all-day sucker for him to lick?
There’s so much joy in Christmas toys,
such happiness for little boys!
But please, please THINK! Avoid a rift …
And don’t give undies as a gift.

So give it a try!  If you don’t, you'll be denying a stranger a good giggle or a warm moment, and that would make you some sort of holiday monster.  Nobody wants that.