A Plutonian Snore 2
Fed up upon a midnight dreary, I labored with eyes red and bleary,
O’er an epic tome of aging prose and poems bound to bore—
While I noodled, nearly napping, suddenly an inner clapping!
Rhyme, no less, had found a way of slapping me awake once more.
“’Tis a happenstance,” I muttered, “a weary chance mistake I’m sure—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, the boredom, I remember, had collected to dismember
Me of all my confidence that I could learn the poet’s lore.
Doggedly I read each verse—the words in Edgar Allen’s purse—
Hoping that they could disperse the labor in this student’s chore
For all “rare” and “radiant” poems never failed in me to bore—
Only this and nothing more.
But no! a slight, syllabic slurry caused another flight to flurry
Found me—bound me with beatific bounties never felt before,
But lo! As if to still the throbbing of my heart’s excited bobbing,
I accidentally spent an awful scent that sent me to the floor.
My sense departed, I had farted, now disturbed I hacked and swore—
Paralyzed and nothing more.
This vile digestive portrait painter wouldn’t pity nor grow fainter
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore.”
But the fact is I was lonely, so the smell had hit me only;
With an arcane force it owned me, befitting for a gift from Thor.
What it was that I’d ingested could have won the Trojan war.
I picked up the book once more.
Long into that poem peering, through old lamp-lit stanzas veering,
Stimulating sibilants soon trumped that anesthetic snore,
The silence now remained unbroken, private passion had awoken
One my bowels had left unspoken; an interest in Poe’s Lenore—
Sympathy arose within me as these words showed their allure—
Tenderness, no less, no more.
I could feel my disdain turning, once inclusive, now discerning
But wasn’t it just stomach churning that had brought taste to the fore?
“Surely,” thought I, “Surely I’ve just ruined my breathing apparatus,
Poe ain’t fit to forge this state; a fondness for a corpse, Lenore—
I won’t believe my heart has been affected by a troubadour,
Just a poet nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter to diffuse this evening flutter,
So the draft swept up my odor like a Saint’s celestial cure,
Not able to secure it’s scent—nor condensate—it up and went
Onwards like some sacred yet abominable god of war,
Yet still I felt this burning passion deep inside my phrenic core—
The truth! I wanted, nothing more.
But the truth caused me to start; “’It was the poem, not the fart!
That forged itself within my heart, and bent my knees down to the floor.
Not even extreme flatulence could shape a counterfeit romance—
Love, like an hypnotic trance, undoubtedly held me in awe.
Rhyme and meter finally had found in me a sound rapport,
I could hate it nevermore.
Not Silverstein’s bright attic light, nor Coleridge’s seafaring plight,
Nor even Cummings’ cadences of Scotland’s user-friendly whores,
Had been able to recruit this unsophisticated brute;
I was unwilling to salute their literary haute couture
And yet The Raven gained a haven—perhaps found via my back door—
There to perch for evermore.
