The Land of Splattamere

AN EPIC POEM BY GEFILTE JAKE LISTON

In a faraway land that was called Splattamere

Things were quite different from how they are here.

In everyday life, things were always absurd.

Goofballs were everywhere. Popular words

In Splattamere included booger and poophead.

The most common disease was to laugh yourself dead.

Nobody walked down the street without tripping

And landing headfirst in a coop full of chickens.

No one had names like Sam Jones or Ray Smith.

Instead, they had names like Amanda Huggenkiss.

In school, every five seconds somebody farted

So nobody got any lessons imparted.

The situation sounds cool but it was unbearable.

Yogurt and soup always ended up wearable.

And every time somebody tried to be serious

Some kind of shenanigans made him delirious.

The people were laughed out, exhausted and tired.

And then one fine day, a kid got inspired.

He had an idea that changed things forever.

His name was Gefilte, and he was quite clever.

He said to himself, Everything is so funny.

If someone was serious, people’d pay money

To sit and not laugh, just to have an escape

From the constant hilarity we always face.

So Gefilte sat down and he wrote some material

About weather and paperwork, Scotch tape and cereal.

He made it all boring and simple and plain.

And when it was all just insanely mundane

He got a microphone, then built a stage

And memorized everything on every page.

And then he put signs up all over the town

That said “On Thursday night, kindly come down

To Gefilte’s house—prepare to be bored to death

By an evening of guaranteed seriousness.”

He wondered all week if the townsfolk would come.

But on Thursday night, it turned out that everyone

In Splattamere had packed themselves into his basement.

He looked down and wondered where all of the space went.

And they looked back up at him desperate to hear

Something unfunny, and soon a big cheer

Erupted, for the first un-joke Gefilte delivered

Was so lame that the crowd gasped, and then they shivered.

Not one single giggle escaped from their throats

As Gefilte rambled pointlessly on about oats.

Then he switched subjects and told them a story

About ballpoint pens that made everyone snorey.

The crowd ate it up. They loved every minute.

They hung on each word—they were totally in it.

Gefilte could feel the room’s boredom increasing.

The pressure of their lives was slowly releasing.

And by the time he stepped down off of the stage

Gefilte’s new stand-up act was all the rage.

The people of Splattamere, with all their might

Begged him to perform again the next night

And the next and the next, and the next and the next

To counter the laughter that had them so vexed.

And from that day on, Gefilte was known

As the pride of the town, for inventing his own

Way of providing the lameness they craved

The only thing that kept the people behaved.

“Hurray for Gefilte,” the townsfolk all cried.

“Hurray for the night that the laughter died.”

And that, my fine friends, is the end of the story.

I hope you all found it unbearably borey.