The English Teacher's Nightmare: A Poem

I grade essays every week, and sometimes the hours of editing stifle my creativity. Here’s a recent exercise I did to bring some of it back. Plus two many typos make me pole my hare out, and I’ve gotta vent somehow.

The high-strung grammarian’s his own class of neurotic;
The affect of such condition lands frankly despotic.
See while some readers forgive that small A so disgraceful,
I’ve recoiled and retched in a manner distasteful.

Oh yes, it slashes me open; I bleed red like a pen
And make punctilious edits with a sigh and amen.
Until a paragraph down when I am offered advise
To relax, smell the flours, and watch the plural butterfly’s.

Perhaps I’ll ignore principle rules or laying in bed
Or the sly whom sneaking off to put a who in its stead.
Yet though I mean not to embellish, I fear nobody sees
What sick, soul-crushing effect that affect has on me.

They say what’s the big deal if y’all know what I mean
Grammers dead, said Nietzsche
and tihs proevs so is splelnig