Artwork © Eric N. Peterson

 

Laziest Citizen

Low-lying Montenegrins vie to veg

As long as they have strength to lie in bed,

Zucchini-like. A myth may well allege,

If you’re a Montenegrin, then you dread

Exertion, but it isn’t really true,

Since thrice a day competitors arise

To have a pee or strain to have a poo,

Concerned about how rapidly time flies—

If you exceed ten minutes, then you’re out …

Though all these strivers, for the crown of most

Inactive, worship sloth, it’s not about

Zoolatry: the winner will have grossed

Enormously, a grand in euros with

No effort—smart, but it upholds the myth!

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. The poem was prompted by the Metro story, “Bizarre ‘Laziest Citizen’ contest sees people lying down for as long as possible.”

Eric N. Peterson is from Atlanta, Ga. He’s been drawing cartoons all his life. He leans towards the absurd, imaginative, and the surreal, as that’s where all the flavor is.