Once upon a time, in the paleolithic Internet era of the mid-to-late 1990s, sharp-witted international rhymers congregated around an obscure watering hole known as the TenderBytes Onion Patch. Although that site has gone the way of the dinosaurs, flashes of brilliance as well as fossils of frivolity have been preserved on not-quite-forgotten hard drives in the possession of its founder, Mary (Sullivan) Boren, who carelessly neglected to renew the Tenderbytes.Net registration in 2003 and lost control of the domain name.
An uncommon camaraderie existed among the poets, as one would set out with a pungent bit o’ schtick in hand and others would quickly line up to take the baton and run with it, resulting in a lively archive of threaded verse to be reconstituted here in digestible segments in the coming days, months, or years as the mood may strike. Some of the players, gone too soon, are memorialized in the Poets at Peace ring on the Poets Collective Multisite Network.
The inaugural post for this blog, Cloud Chasin’, is a tip o’ the hat to the inimitable cowboys in the group who could kick up a Texas Fibstorm in a New York minute that would blow the socks off all of us from Peoria to Perth. Collections yet to come include Eatin’ Bugs, Best Face Forward, Cooking with Cardboard, Food Fight, Bernie the Bullfrog, The Abominable Cowboy, Desparte Oddos, When Pigs Fly, and many others. (And that’s without even poking the slumbering limerick monster!) Doggerel, you say? Absolutely. Every loving word.
Slightly more sedate features from the original TenderBytes archive, technologically updated for the 21st Century, will also appear here in due time. Enjoy!