Pilot

I want a website: “an uncommon want”
When social media are where it’s at.
But who likes eating at a restaurant
Where the chef is known to all as a twat
Who spits in people’s food as is his wont?
Nor are the regulars better than that:
Inharmonious dicks and cunts et alia,
Concordant on just one note—genitalia.

“Ninety percent of everything is crud.”
So we’re consoled by Sturgeon’s revelation.
Yet, if nine persons out of ten are dud,
Multiply that to the scale of a nation
And you too might long for another Flood
To deluge a ninth of the population⁠—
A pair of pruners, a sickle, a scythe
To cut the canker off the healthy tithe.

Lest any call me an immoral bard⁠—
Which would bankrupt me and my record label⁠—
I’ll state that I have the utmost regard⁠—
Or have as much of it as I am able⁠—
For moral values. Therefore, to discard
Everyone’s doubts, I shall relate a fable
Concerning a blue bird that was turned black
Without the least prospect of changing back:

Once upon a time—and a good time too
It was, my gentle reader, honor bright⁠—
There lived a warbler of deep azure hue
Whose every single feather was a sight⁠—
To say nothing at all of taking two,
Which, having taken one, one as well might⁠—
Unparalleled in prettiness by any
Who challenged her, of whom there were not many.

Her song was lilting, lyrical, and lush;
Her very silence wordless poetry⁠—
So much so that indeed her quiet hush
One could mistake for Cage, 4′ 33″.
(No pun intended—really, swear to gosh!)
It would be shameful in an aviary
To make a jailbird of this prima donna
As if she cultivated marijuana.

Yet, owing to the corrupt justice system
Erected by persons who will go nameless
(I wish I knew their names so I could list ’em),
It’s not rare for a captive to be blameless,
While lawbreakers and all those who assist ’em
Too often walk free and are even shameless
About the crimes they openly commit.
(These persons’ names also I must omit.)

So our songster was locked up in a cote
Where people could go all night and all day
To watch with wonder her cerulean coat
And listen to her sing her lovely lay.
Her wings, her tail, her comb, her breast, her throat
Her captors put by force on full display.
In short, they made her their performing monkey⁠—
A dogsbody, workhorse, or golden donkey.

One day there came an odor with the wind⁠—
Namely the sickly stench of cervine semen⁠—
Whose effect on the bird was of the kind
That a seiren’s singing has on a seaman.
Thus driven to madness, losing her mind,
She started to behave like a vile demon:
Begrimed in her red heart and her blue crest,
The fowl did nothing but foul her own nest.

Now black as black can be—black as a crow
(“Ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore”)
The grim, ungainly corbie who told Poe,
In reply to all questions, “Nevermore”
(Or was it something else that caused him woe?
I must admit I am not really sure.
I am reminded of a writing desk,
But what’s that got to do with it—don’t ask.)⁠—

Now black in body and in soul the same,
Instead of crooning melodies that awed
Millions of birdwatchers and earned her fame,
She only made a croaking sound—she cawed.
Worst of all, she forgot her Christian name,
But (and I find this contradiction odd)
Chose for a new name the sign of the cross.
(I wish I had not shot that albatross,

For, though three under par is rather purdy
And is what one may call turning up trumps,
E’en so, I’d rather have a tuneful birdie
Than golden eagles in towers, or chumps
Who, although multimillionaires by thirty
Whose professed genius is cause for goosebumps,
Are nothing but a wake of condors. Last,
Albatross shooting’s bad luck for the mast.)

A number of the birders, in a haze,
Remained and listened to her raspy cries,
While others, feeling sheepish, sought to graze
In greener pastures under bluer skies.
A great many there were who fixed their gaze
On little balls of yarn with tearful eyes.
And who’d have thunk of substituting herds
Of extinct tuskers for damned singing birds?

“Extremis malis extrema remedia”
Perhaps can justify this desperate measure.
I leave the assessment of this commedia
For my readers to exercise at leisure.
What does this have to do with social media?
Another jewel from the Roman treasure:
“Praestat cautela quam medela.” So
It’s only wise to have a website, no?

I too was once enchanted by such tones
As those of the bird of Jack, Ev, and Biz;
I too have heard the sound of sad trombones
Mourning over halcyon carcasses.
Tenants of glass houses should not throw stones⁠—
’Tis Man’s nature to covet what’s not his:
The reason why the Son on earth was tortured
Was Adam’s eatin’ from the Father’s orchard.

Then I realized—a songbird in captivity,
Although cantabile for a few hours,
Will soon retire of its jolly festivity
When the stale air of the prison cell sours.
Corollary: it is only naivety
That makes us think we can own what’s not ours.
Such egocentric aims, such selfish goals
Inspire none but inartistic souls.

Mine is a spirit of a softer species,
Being a poet’s. (Take this as my proof:
I can recite and sing while passing feces⁠—
But only when I’m under my own roof⁠—
Rhyming the dog shit out of my ABCs.)
Therefore, independence is what I—“Woof!”
Hark! the bitch of my fancy is in whelp⁠—
I think I’m gonna need a bit of help.

Most poets’ method of composing verse
Is to commence it with an invocation.
But their apostrophes are much too terse,
Leading in haste to some dull long narration.
My modus operandi’s the inverse:
I open with a tale of short duration,
After which I at length beg to be blest,
Returning home from my Parnassian quest.

O Muses fair of visage—of voice fine!
I call upon you to ask for a favor:
Pray midwife this poetic pooch of mine;
Deliver her from her Herculean labor.
(Forgive the half-rhyme in the latter line.
The mythological travail I gave her
Induced me to use that poetic license,
Which otherwise I brush aside as nonsense.)

According to Roman mythology,
You sang for Latona as in her bed
She bore the God of pharmacology,
The lyre, the laurel wreath, the arrowhead,
The python, and the sun—Apollo. Gee!
I almost forgot to mention unwed
Diana, who, though herself newly born,
Midwifed her mother till the morrow morn.

My point is, having seen such birth in action
As puts to shame the birth of Alexander⁠—
Same father, in a different abstraction,
Come down in the shape of a bolt of thunder⁠—
While dancing to the rhythm of each contraction,
You might also enjoy taking a gander
Between my canine’s thighs at what she spawns⁠—
A pack of hounds is like a game of swans.

The Ugly Duckling turned into a cob;
I shall not want for my cubs any worse.
So please accept the aforementioned job:
Help my bitch bear her puppies, and wet-nurse
Her tots with milk from your tits as they bob
For apples under your bosoms. Immerse
Them in the waters of the Horse’s Fountain.
But ere the cygnets hatch there’s time for countin’:

O, how I wish for my expectant cur
Nine female pups, “all of one mind”, to birth,
Whose noble appellation, as it were,
May nominally determine their worth.
I intend, if you won’t think it a thlur
(Thometimeth one hath to lithp to rhyme one’th verthe),
To name them after you, O worthy Mutheth,
In the order that Mithter Lucath chootheth:

Four, five, six, one, two, three, seven, eight, nine.
(Which, I’d like to say in a parenthetical,
Is a far better order, I opine,
Than chronological or arithmetical.)
I am guided by my research online⁠—
So everything henceforth is hypothetical⁠—
In sorting you by time of birth, ascending,
And in my words of praise, which are impending.

The first pup then I shall name after thee,
Delightful Euterpe, Muse of the flute:
An instrument that Monsieur Debussy
In music so divine beyond dispute,
His timeless Prélude à «L’Après-midi
D’un faune», showcased. (A faun is a hirsute
Half-man, half-goat creature who is so horny,
Describing him would make my poem porny.

Writing verse on waking up with a boner
From a sultry siesta’s not my way.
Everyone knows the airs that I intone err
On the side of decency. Now, thar may
Among my readers be some naughty goner
Who’ll slake his thirst by scanning Mallarmé.
As for thee, Goddess, I trust that thou know’st
The Faun’s Sicilian shores from coast to coast.)

Since my verse seems to be on a French roll⁠—
That is to say, at present there’s a wave
Of Frenchmen in it—it would have a hole
If I did not mention Chopin, whose grave
Thou sitst atop of. (I know he’s a Pole
By birth, and he felt himself Polish, save
For signing his name in Frenchified version,
Which might be due to language immersion.)

To answer thy feminist sensibility
Before thy fiery temper turns to fury:
Who says greatness comes only from virility?
I’ll therefore add, to my artful potpourri
Of French persons whose great names’ durability
Was secured by their great work, Madame Curie:
Another Polish-born who moved to France⁠—
Went there to study, stayed there to romance.

Speaking of which: thou, O lovely Muse
Of erotic poetry, art the next
To give thy name to a pup that ensues
From my dog’s profuse pregnancy. I’m vexed.
I shared three stanzas earlier my views
On sensual lyrics that approach sext,
But now I’ve got a new bee in my bonnet
And feel like writing a Petrarchan sonnet:

I spy a nymph disrobing by the pond:
Her filmy garb adorns the citrus trees
And flutters in the warm, sweet-scented breeze
That carries the perfumes of nymphs beyond.
She stoops down: massive shocks of natural blonde
Disturb the water—heretofore at ease.
She slides, she swims, she stops, and, by degrees,
She sinks below the surface—free and fond.
A lemon, draped in silk, hangs overhead;
I stretch my arm to pick, but cannot reach.
Forever will the silken shroud enswathe
The fragranced fruit. I burn. I strip and tread
With bare feet on the scorching sandy beach
And dive into the depths to cool—to bathe.

Thou hast inspired this my poem, Erato,
As thou didst Vergil’s mind, though less romantic⁠—
For I shall always sing of nymphs who bare a toe
And dip it in cold water, but that antic
Will sing of battles, blood, and rage’s merit. O
To be a proud youth, O to be pedantic!
’Tis pride and youth that make the boy so brave
To dance on top of his old master’s grave.

Now, when there’s talk of dance there’s no one better
Than thou, Terpsichore, who i’ dance delightest.
On Mount Olympus, where rules thy begetter,
Thou entertain’st the gods—leftist and rightist⁠—
For thou performest thy twerks with no fetter
And no unmeasured misstep in the slightest.
Thou pleasest the immortals as they sup,
So I’ll give thy name to my dog’s third pup.

I wish to ask for something—pray don’t pass on⁠—
As I submit to thee this earnest paean:
Ballet dancers can bend themselves like croissant⁠—
At least the flexible and the protean;
There’s pas de chat, de cheval, and de poisson,
Yet for some reason there’s no pas de chien.
If anybody can invent this move
And dance it to perfection—in the groove⁠—

’Tis thou. If lobsters have their own quadrille,
Why should not canines, who are men’s best friends?
Imagine what great fun ’twill be—what thrill⁠—
To see Prometheus’ Creatures try new trends!
So pray give it a thought at length until
The next time when the fire thief offends:
Wilt thou or wilt thou not invent the dance?
Either way I must make my poem advance.

There are times when the poet’s so inspired,
He can compose in any genre ad hoc.
But often he finds his fancy expired,
And loses his way round the writer’s block.
His plight is even worse if he’s required
To meet some deadline. Nothing like a clock
Can freeze a hitherto enkindled mind⁠—
It is the worst invention of mankind.

Not worse, albeit, than its pending doom:
Machines man foolishly asks for suggestion
On what to write—machines he lets consume
The words of his fathers and, by digestion,
Make shit up based on what they could exhume.
“To be or not to be? That is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer …”
Or something else of Shakespeare’s they might offer.

“The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”
They list as reasons why Hamlet went nudist;
“My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer” to
Steve Jobs they credit from when he turned Buddhist;
They cite the rotten state of Denmark’s air to
Point out the cons of going absolutist.
For these hallucinations and for more
No thanks—they’re ghastly and my eyes are sore.

I like to write my poems the old way:
Invoking some god or some muse’s aid
To ease my speech and my Pegasus’ neigh.
One muse suffices usually. That said,
I’ve called on three and yet I go astray.
So ere my antimodern escapade
Develops into its own separate epic⁠—
Writing which would take me at least an epoch⁠—

I’ll call on thee, Calliope, the highest
Of nine in age and beauty both; the singer
Who fought with song the cheekiest, the slyest
Of Pierus’ daughters (boy, was she a ringer!)
And won the battle fair and square—unbiased
Nymphs were the refs—and changed her to a winger,
And changed her sisters too. They sought for prize
Medusa’s spring, instead they were magpies.

Thou taughtest thy son Orpheus to sing
(Need I recount his history at all?)
And what he learned from thee for him did bring
Eurydice’s undying love. Her fall
To the Underworld, inflicted by the sting
Of a snake while she danced her wedding ball;
How he made plea to Pluto and his wife
To grant Eurydice a second life;

How they were moved by his song and his lyre⁠—
For such is the power of music—and allowed
The bride to follow her love-stricken sire
On one condition, and so the groom vowed
Not to turn back to see his heart’s desire;
How she instantly vanished when he bowed
Down to his lust and broke his promise; how in
His sorrow he loved Jungen and fled Frauen;

How then the crazy Thracian womenfolk,
Who wanted him, protested his caprices
And threw themselves on him and called him woke
And with both hands and tools tore him to pieces;
How Bacchus, angered, turned them all to oak
And let his poet know at last what peace is⁠—
All these I need not tell and shall not tell,
For you, O heavenly sisters, know them well.

’Tis not my place to give a history lesson
When thou art present, Clio. Tales like this
Are more thy forte; they’re like thy Morgenessen⁠—
Which is what breakfast is called by the Swiss.
Thou know’st thousands of stories. So I’m guessin’
There is no need for me to reminisce
About Pierus—not the one named before,
With whose daughter thy sister mopped the floor;

Rather a different Pierus, with whom fair
Venus unfairly made thee fall in love.
The how, the when, the wherefore, and the where
Thou know’st already: when from high above
Thou looked’st down on her and her love affair
With young Adonis, thou hadst a tinge of
Mockery in thy smiling ruby lips⁠—
Particularly at how she moved her hips.

So in her wrath she cried out, “O thou prude!
I’ll teach thee to smirk at my well-wrought urn.
[She meant her booty.] Here’s a random dude
[She pointed to Magnes’ son]; ’Tis thy turn
To go au naturel [aka nude].”
Then all thy body appeared to burn,
Which might have been due to a surge of emotion,
But more likely forgetting thy sun lotion:

Something thy son did not forget to use
When hanging out with the sun god Apollo,
Believing that the cream or oil subdues
The dangers of UV, lest cancer follow.
Ironic then that instead he should choose
To die by Phoebus’ discus. As one swallow
Is not enough to make a summer, so
Sunscreen alone cannot withstand sun’s blow.

Such is the world—a stage—and every man
A hero waiting for his tragic fall:
One thinks too much, one acts without a plan,
One has too many foes, one none at all,
One hates his friends, one is too big a fan
Of himself, one sits on top of a wall
And loses balance, one shaves off his hair …
One way or another all mortals err.

And thou, Melpomene, watchest their play,
Holding a bloody dagger in one hand,
A mask in the other, whose sobriquet
Is thine own name. Now I shall, for the grand
Opening of this my new website pray
To thee that, should my undertaking and
My dog’s parturition end tragically,
Thou wilt at least save the pups magically.

As long as there’s a Rome—unless the sages
Have lied—Ovid will live. Make me immortal,
O Muse, as long as people read web pages.
Let all the poetry that I record, all
My prose, and all my music live for ages.
Or, if nothing else, tell me today’s Wordle,
Because I have squandered five of my guesses;
I’d hate to break the streak of my successes,

Which, at this point, is in scale astronomical.
I hope thou art, Urania, proud of that,
Holding a globe in thy hand, which is comical,
For everybody knows the earth is flat.
(Just kidding. Actually the world is domical:
A green-blue bowler hat atop a cat
Atop a cat atop a cat atop
A cat atop a cat … so on nonstop.)

Let the readers of my site be as many
As the stars in all-encompassing heaven⁠—
None of the good-for-nothing, ten-a-penny
Type; rather ones who pass a vigorous sievin’⁠—
Those who prefer Carlos Kleiber to Lenny.
I seek the very best. Muse Number 7,
Find me as many days as Rome was built in
More readers than thou foundest for John Milton.

Easier said than done, I know, but honey
Is made not by just one bee from one bloomer.
So, Muse, Thalia, if thou think’st me funny,
If thou art pleased with my wit and my humor,
Then let it multiply as does a bunny
In March. Improve my work and spread the rumor.
The bee analogy is apt, because
That’s how we coined the term marketing buzz,

And buzz is a sure path to the sweet riches.
Now, as my poem’s getting longer than
Scheherazade’s tale of the two black bitches⁠—
Which she “when it was the ninth night” began,
But, having intermingled it with kitches
(Namely three bald men’s anecdotes), made span
Eleven nights, and would ad infinitum
Have stretched it, but the King feared they might bite him⁠—

I must pay my respects to many-voiced
Polymnia and end my comic scena,
And rest a while on my laurels, rejoiced
That, though I’ve not the gift of Palestrina
Or Fux, I made the trip. But soon you’ll hoist
My flag on the twin peaks again, Lucina⁠—
Or so I hope—when I sing of another
Poetic labor by another mother.

And I shall sing it in a deeper voice:
It will be personal and full of whining⁠—
A portrait of myself à la James Joyce⁠—
And give an account of the silver lining
Turned forth by sable clouds of many a choice
I made. But I learned one thing from The Shining:
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
So I’ll make the next octave the envoi.

If you—goddess or mortal—found my notes
Too sharp, too loud, too discordant, too many,
Forgive me; know that yours truly devotes
Himself to his craft and his art, and any
Fault will, with help from his muse whom he dotes
On madly, be put right—in for a penny,
In for a pound. But if you liked this verse,
Know that the next one won’t be any worse.

9 June 2025