The Tawdry Apostrophe (Extended Metaphor) Part 2 Poem by Philip Housiaux

As youngsters chatter and push bear cubs on the carpet
a taught face leans over, peering through spectacles, into hearts
Suddenly, “I am the teacher. Apostrophe”, slamming down his ruler.
As pupils nervously raise hands to faces flesh assured
Macbeth’s ghost in a near word perfect incantation takes over
unperceived, it is the voice of the unfulfilled patroniser.

Boys and girls, the etymology, so very diagnostic here
well for one of its schizo-affective psychologies, as you’ll see.
Mid-Sixteenth Century sais the OED, accent of elision (or schism?)
via late Latin, from the Greek. Find the manic, now we’re in top gear.
So apo is the root from or away – apohelion, furtherest the sun
and strephein to turn, as a satellite in orbit, the apogee.
So if it’s all the same to you I will use apo and strephein
the more precisely to enlighten this Iliad of meaning,
perhaps avoid a few land mines, and IEDs near Marathon’s run.

Boys and girls, the apostrophe - a catchy case of logical induction
when your maxims you have learnt as accentual meter and rhyme:
for when not a possession, a someone’s or something’s thing or person
it’s a case of abbreviation or letters missing – well from somewhere.
You won’t have any trouble, for as babies cry with Cyclops eyes
to remind mind and emotions of birth, so apostrophe’s rhymes will stay till ya dying.
So with guile meet its twin coal pits, and with reasoning suspend by tail
for when a simple singular or plural possession, this rule will not fail:
just retrospectively add apo s or s apo, but don’t “s” double.

So if already having the s plural, because certain of two or more
no need to be distressed, or revert to heuristics, odd vain statistics
just add the strephein to get the correct ending, even when phrasal compound
and now you have a plural that’s also the last noun’s possession.

I should have explained: simple here means noun not ending s,
so singular might’s right to decide and plural dogs’ vomit,
but of course meaningless, the mights’ decision pleural,
for two mights (like wrongs) cannot make a right, or both be -
even when well fed, groomed, and lovingly called George and Tony.

Now as to nouns s ending, why follow the same rules:
apo s for singular possession, and s apo for the plural’s.
So with these same tools your concrete and abstract nouns, both
of count and non-countable type, are mere servile fools
to the King Cobra of writing retractions.