phonebook freaks

Those silly phonebook names
from Amy Admire
to Ziggy Zykowski --
you flip through looking
for a gritty name
for your private eye,
but all you find are freaks
and comic relief.

Then you can't find the number
of that wacky writer
who gave you the idea
in the first place.

Oh well, back to lonely
Max Something-or-Other --
maybe he'll tell you
his real name if you
listen hard enough.

---

accepted by San Diego Writers Monthly (2002).
A gag about naming fictional characters. Some say to look in the phone book, but there are some weirder-than-fiction names in there!