by Stephen Gold

“Top of the flops: the world’s worst inventions honoured in [Parisian] exhibition.”
—The Times

Is your brilliant new invention
Met with smirks of condescension?
Are your friends inclined to mention you’re a nut?
Does your lunatic creation
To aid golfers’ urination
Find the door to acclamation firmly shut?

Welcome to our exhibition,
Where your wacky intuition
Has unqualified permission to roam free.
Innovators with ambition
Can at last win recognition
For their vision (though its flaws are plain to see).

We should cherish our freethinkers.
Though their thoughts are often stinkers,
They’re not blinkered to the promise of the new.
What the hell if other nations
Love to mock their aspirations?
France thinks l’excentricité’s right up our rue.