I have no experience with Alan Partridge, though I did catch Ricky Gervais answering the question "What's the difference between English and U.S. audiences?" with "English people want to knock you down more. Americans encourage success. British people don't think it'll happen to them and don't like it to happen to others." "Battered" as either an adjective or verb can be logically included in the phrase "Prof. Plum with the candlestick" - provided "battered" does not refer to something dipped in batter and fried, as it almost always does in this part of the Southern U.S. "Polished" also works as an adj or (slightly slangy) verb. Pull.

i totally get your point. i thought about the capitalization thing, just didnt feel like doin it. ballet(yes i know how to pronounce it) and valley(or alley or rally) do not rhyme.

I was quoting Alan Partidge. You're just saying random words. I think you'd better take a long, hard look at your life, zodiac.

If my mother had been so kind when I opened the saltshaker and filled it with glue, I might have stopped doing it.

who cares what nationality the butler is.

sure it rhymes (the T is silent) - that it isn't the same foot makes it a bit awkwark though. Maybe you should capitalize it to make it more of a, uh, what you call a - proper noun so the fair reader doesn't have to take out the magic decoder ring. This is what messing with standard rules like for capitalization and punctuation do to a poem - it makes readers second-guess stuff (especially on a forum like this). Chalk it up as a datapoint. The word in that place doesn't really effect the thing overall anyway.

Balley's is also a Riverboat Gambling Hall in Tunica! (although it's with an e, but it sounds the same..)

I'm sorry if you misunderstood, Mike - I didn't mean to say it should have rhymed. And while I appreciate that you are versed in haiku, I don't appreciate that you assume I'm not. Yet I grant you the opportunity to express that fact - at length. I will agree that in *translations* we'll occasionally see assonance with two words, but you must agree that to do it with three - intentionally - pushes the boundaries of being subtle (especially with the alliteration with the feet/frost/grass). Quite simply, it reduces the effect of the cutting word (the lack of which in this haiku is likely why you don't consider it one of your strongest). As far as creeping on feet goes – are you just being contrary? Creeping on toes – maybe, or knees, sure – but on feet? Maybe this thought would better be contained within a cinquain? Eh, whatever - you know what you know and surely some "kid" like me couldn't show you otherwise, right? I'm looking forward to #21

ballets doesn't rhyme. and ballys is like the most popular gym in the country. i have never heard of anyone not hearing of it before.

Haiku doesn't have to rhyme--it is unnecessary to the English version of the form. That said, repetition of sounds and words is not at all uncommon in anglicized haiku. Here's a translation on one of Issa's haiku by David G. Lanoue: "First snowfall!" and then, soon enough three or four feet There you have "three" and "feet". Issa himself also repeats the hell out of words. Do a search on "dewdrop" in this work sometime. While we're on the subject, it's not technically rhyming, but, rather, a technique called assonance that is at work in grouping "breeze", "creeps", and "feet". It appears frequently in Old English poetry, but it has been used quite a lot since then by poets in this language. The fact that English techniques get applied to Japanese forms is just the way things work. Our obsessive attention to counting syllables, in fact, is pretty much an English convention, since the whole syllable counting thing works differently in Japanese. Take a look at really good modern translations of Haiku, particularly by Robert Hass--he sticks with short-long-short rather than 5-7-5--it's just one of those accommodations that get made when you go from one language to another very different one, each with their own literary conventions and histories. By the way, the "knees" thing just doesn't make any sense at all. And I won't even start on that roundeye bullshit, kid. That said, it isn't my strongest haiku; I totally admit that.

"Polished."

"Battered candlestick doesn't make any sense" doesn't make any sense.

oh, just read justification about. Change it anyway; no one knows what the hell that is.

Battered candlestick doesn't make any sense.

"Battered."

Okay, you wrote it, I only read it, how would I know?