Adverbs, and other enemies

One of the new bow-strings I am investigating - in my continual quest to ward off starvation - is scientific editing: helping to write up technical papers for publication in learned journals. To that end, I've just been on a three-day training seminar run by a company that specializes in this field. Although I have a better grounding in grammar than most people (the first - and least marketable - of my many academic qualifications was in Latin!), 20hrs of being slapped around the head with 'the parts of speech' is enough for any man.

I was reminded that The Ex once confided to me that she had a particular horror of adverbs. However, like acrophobics exorcising their demons by abseiling off a tall building (something I myself have done - it's not exactly that I don't like high places; but I really don't like the idea of falling off them....), she once set herself to write a doggerel poem in which each line or verselet would hinge on an adverb. I took on the same challenge (stealing a first line from another of the poem-fragments that she had sent me), but departed from the original formula in the coda. I felt it chimed particularly well with the restless (sometimes self-tormenting) dissatisfaction I so often see in her. It's a small silly thing, but I like it. (Hers was probably better.)

Tomorrow

Tomorrow's not a house
You can enter
Safely.

Tomorrow's not a room
You can decorate
Ornately.

Tomorrow's not a bed
Where you can await a lover
Languidly.

Tomorrow's not a pillow
You can lay your head on
Peacefully.

Tomorrow
Is a house locked against you,
A room in disarray,
A bed that will always be empty,
A cold rock under your head.