Napowrimo for 4.8.26: Safe & Effective

The National Poetry Writing Month Challenge, at napowrimo.net, looks at an existing poem each day and invites participants to try to imitate something about the poem--its form, its tone, its philosophical intention... For the 8th of April the prompt was to use a repeated phrase, a refrain, to form a poem the rest of which disproves the claim the refrain makes.

Well. You knew the home of Glyphosate Awareness would have to feature one glyphosate poem. So this is it. Other poems will have nicer topics. Other poems should also have more regular meter...I tend to hear poems like songs. They have to have a steady "beat" but you can always syncopate the melody a bit, or squeeze in a few extra syllables as grace-notes, if the words make better sense that way.

Our government approves so many toxic 

chemicals that they can hardly be selective,

but of course we know that everything that's in the stores

has been tested and found safe and effective.

The documents the EPA was given,

even though done from Monsanto's perspective,

show lesions, a man's flesh burnt down to bone,

but glyphosate must be safe and effective.

They tell how how half the mice they tested lived

though with uncomfortable symptoms affected,

and hardly any two had the same cancer,

which means that glyphosate's safe and effective.

Yonder a field's so choked with kudzu vines

that raising even kudzu's not effective

or likely to be in the owner's lifetime--

but glyphosate is so safe and effective!

Nine out of ten depressive patients showed

improvement, though the side effects respective-

ly sound bad enough to trigger the homicide-suicides,

but SSRIs are safe and effective.

The "diet" sweets cause seizures in some dieters,

while leaving some so pensive and reflective

that brains and bowels and even hearts slack off,

but "diet" food and drink's safe and effective.

The COVID vaccines were experimental

and by the time a batch was found effective

against one strain, that strain had come and gone--

but all vaccines must be safe and effective.

Measles, a cold that settles in the eyes

and lasts for weeks, causes distress affective,

so now it's feared as if it were the plague,

which makes the vaccine so safe and effective.

The innovative cars tend to catch fire

while sitting still; this feature's not attractive,

but all the cool kids want that kind of cars,

for they've been shown to be safe and effective.

You can find numbers that show anything

if in the counting you have been selective,

and though you've seen things kill people you knew

the numbers show that they're safe and effective.

When choosing what to buy and use for self

or for your children, a useful corrective

is to see how something has worked for your friends

before believing it's safe and effective.