Borderline

The doctor says my personality is "Borderline"
...

NO WONDER I KEEP THINKING ABOUT NEVADA ALL THE TIME!!!

Asterisk

I'm a poetaster
And don't even knowitaster


(-isk)




--------------------------
* Hi world!

Mightier than the Sword

My thoughts may be febrile
My words untoward
But the talk at the sperm bank
Is . . .

"The Penis Mightier than the Sword"!!!

MJ(acko)-12

That Jacko looked like an Alien
Should come as no surprise
UFO's "MJ-12" is the shadowy Jury
That tells where the Truth of Contact ... lies ...

Ecce Schlomo?

George Soros may be straight
Or George Soros may be a homo
But having wrought what he sought to create
Why did God have to say "ECCE SHLOMO!?"

...

Ode to Michael Jackson

A life
A face
A voice
A role
A rhyme
A race -

The Muzak
Of the Oversoul

In Search of An Editor

Seeking to charm
The editorial tyro
Is like trying to disarm
. . .

The Venus de Milo !!!

Ode to Twitter

This ode to Twitter
Is simple as can be
As the Jabberwock IM'd to Alice -
Tweetledum ...
Tweetledee ...

Ode to the Open Society

Why does it call itself open?
Its doors are rudely closed to me!
Methinks there's a Magister Deluded
Confusing "Open Society" with . . .

"Open Sesame"

Ode to the Beats

Those of literary substance pall
And look askance on what we wits think
Take Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Vidal -
...
THE FOUR HOARSE MEN
OF THE APOCALIPSYNCH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Abstinence

A drink a day

. . .

. . .

Keeps the shrink away !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ode to the AIDS Hoax

Mares eat oats
And does eat oats
And little lambs
Eat HIV ...*

_________________
* "Eat" in the colloquial sense of "to swallow an absurd, idiotic untruth"; "be taken in"; "be deceived by superiors with malicious intent" - Enid Evenson Haddow de Burke, Literary Advisor to the Queen

If the Pen

If the pen is mightier than the sword
Why did the one given the greatest gift by the Lord
Shake a spear?*


----------
* Editor's Note

Clearly Scylla here intends the implied "ghost rhyme":

Isn't that queer?
. . .

Enid Evenson Haddow de Burke
Literary Advisor to the Queen

Ode to the Latinates

Mica mica
Parva stella
Custodes cognoscent
Sis tam bella*


____________________
* Editor and Literary Advisor to the Queen Enid Evenson Haddow De Burke:

For you non-Latinates out there, here is the English translation -

Twinkle twinkle
Little star
The happy satellite
Knows where you are ...

On Shakespeare

Literary debate on Shakespeare's sexuality
Has endured centuries and may still more
But I know a Queen once received him
With "Henry - The Avon Lady's at the door!"

Ode to Wickedpedia

I long ago told them:

"Aviatrix Laura Houghtailing Ingalls, J.P. Morgan's great-granddaughter-in-law, loved to fly her girlfriends* to her chalet at Berchtesgaden."

...

A world-important fact
The editors
Have most mysteriously ... "forgotten" ...

__________________________________________
* Weren't they all! (or, for those of you who speak a teutonic tongue - put THAT in your sauerbraten!!!) - Enid Evenson Haddow De Burke

On the Subway

A glance
Askance
Perchance ...
Love?

The Netizen is a Creature Coy

The "netizen" is a creature coy
Here today, gone tomorrow
Oh were there a Shakespeare to envoie
Clicking Submit ... is such sweet sorrow ...

An Adage Comes of Age

Rome's long fallen
So time's mores phrased anew:
When at home
...
Do as the homos do!

Ode to Kenneth Anger

Dedicated to Bill Landis




Cocteau famously told us your Fireworks
Touches the quick of the soul, so rare!
But as the Beast once whispered to a beauty
Don't ever believe that tales ... are fair ...

Voicemail

Children - Welcome back for another installment of "Adventures in Poetry"!

First, let's recap last week's lesson. After analyzing the metrical formulae underlying all "well-constructed" (or, for my more advanced students, "canonical") voicemail greetings, we studied an example of the generically "safe" model:

Please leave a message
At the tone
Speak slowly and clearly
Remember -
You're on the telephone!

And now, time to move on to something meatier!

For this week's lesson, we turn to the ground-breaking work of my good friend and mentor, T. Sedgwick, Freshman Associate at the Foundation for the Study of World Importance (headquartered in sunny Miami, Florida!) I direct your attention to his seminal study, "Voicemail Aesthetics: How to Lighten Your Load in a Rough Economy".

Specifically, we now examine the current voicemail Oeuvre of a literary queen who is no stranger to any of you - Her Incomparable Highness J. K. Rowling! Heads up! - here we go:

Hello
This is J. K. Rowling
I'm not at home
I've just gone bowling ...

Next week: Dame Barbara Cartland welcomes us to her Devonshire estate!

Ode to Jack Kerouac

Dedicated to Barry Miles and Gerald Nicosia




A caraway seed
From a Cracker Jack box
Is the prize that I found ...

On the road to detox.

My words are like gold

My words are like gold
I rule a realm most aureate
Only I can forever say
I am . . .

The Poetaster Laureate



- Scylla vom und zu Karybdis

Ode to a Kennedy

"They came alot ... in Camelot ..."

I

O Senator Edward M. Kennedy
Valiant supporter of AIDS-hoax legislation!

II

Ted be nimble
Ted be civic
Ted jump over
The Chappa ... quiddick ...

Brave New Words

Aldous Huxley, who is now dead,
Might still be alive if instead
Of "Ford's in his flivver"
He'd said of a Brave New Girl:

"Scylla's quip's in her quiver,
All's right with the world!"

Ode to Oscar Wilde

A life shattered ...

But does it matter?
Does Wonderland
Need a Mad Hatter?
Why should it, and who cares
Life is full of so many snares
Demands and responsibilities
Thwarting all our sensitivities
So, here's what I can glean from this
Speaking for myself, de propundis
And, recusing with respect
Funny Ellen
And funny Rosie -

A Bosie ... is a Bosie ... is a Bosie ... is a Bosie.

A life shattered
Does it matter
Does Wonderland
Need a Mad Hatter

Lament of the Laureate

My role as Poetaster is oft-times bleak
I am the butt of much mirth and merriment
"What a clown!" say some
"Put the pen down!" say others
But I will stay my course with head held high
Reaching out over land and sky
For I have metaphors to make before I weep
I have similes to go ...
Before I sleep

Exegetical Commentary to Ode to Oscar Wilde

Exegetical Commentary to the Ode to Oscar Wilde of Scylla vom und zu Karybdis
by Enid Evenson Haddow de Burke


The legacy of Baroness Scylla vom und zu Karybdis in the world of literature is too well-known to require amplification here. She never ceases to stagger. And so it is when Scylla takes on one of the greatest tragedies of modern, if not all, time - the life of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.

Born into a privileged home, educated at Oxford, Oscar's innate, virginal talent was so overwhelming that he burst upon the drab Victorian society of his era like an hellenic sun-god, adorned in finest raiment, adored, radiant. Naturally, this aroused jealousy, provoking what I like to call the "nattering of the philistines".

Oscar entered into an innocent friendship with a younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas, affectionately known as Bosie, son of the evil Marquess of Queensberry. This crude man, backward even for his day, disliked Oscar's very aesthetic influence upon his son, Bosie, and made unfair, slanderous accusations designed to tear them apart. And so it came to pass.

Deemed to have committed unspecified "crimes against nature," Oscar was sent to prison. There he wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", followed by the dazzlingly deep "De Profundis". Upon his release, spat on in the streets, pilloried by press and pulpit, he went into exile in France and Italy, never again to return to his beloved England.

Times have certainly changed! Contemporary academicians are now unstinting in their praise of the Wildean oeuvre, ranking Oscar's play "The Importance of Being Earnest", along with Shaw's "Arms and the Man", as the two greatest English language works of the past century and a half.

Society, in the meantime, pursues its blind, savage course with utmost disregard for all that is beautiful and lofty in Life. Ensuing generations have given themselves over to blood-lusts, such as Hemingway's incessant running-on-of-the-bulls, with endless bingeing on alcohol - the exploits of the so-called "Lost Generation", named by lesbian jewess Gertrude Stein, whose sole contribution to literature was a single sentence, the mindlessly repetitive "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"! And was Ms. Stein called to task for her own public wallowings in perversion? Ha! Certainly not! No more than today's shabby, shallow entertainment jesters - Ellen DeGenerate and Rosie O'Donnell - always lesbians! Let the good times roll in Lesbianville! (I think I feel a jingle coming on - Who put the G in the GLBT?! Perhaps George Soros can pay to have Sigmund Freud exhumed and reanimated to explain it to us --

But, ah ... returning to our principal theme, we find ourselves, like Alice through the Looking Glass, venturing into a land unlike any other, where the mind of one of the most brilliant thinkers of our time trains her powers of unexcelled perception, as can she alone, upon the Eternal Unfoldment of the Sokrates-Mythos, this greatest, this Greekest, of all Tragedies. I now give you - Ode to Oscar Wilde.

Enid Evenson Haddow de Burke
Literary Advisor to the Queen

Transsexual and Transgendered

Empty cliches not worth my while!
This Baroness,
Alone on this planet,
Lays claim to ...

Transgentile

CIA undermined in the States by MI5?

Not on your life - not while I'm alive!"

Whereupon Trevor raised his tankard on high

"I pledge it by my Lord in Heaven,
In this, His Year
Two Thousand Double-0 Seven !!!"



- excerpted from T. Sedgwick's May 1, 2007 address to the Junior League of Memphis, Tennessee, to be published in The Annals of the Foundation for the Study of World Importance v. 5