Poetry Corner

Over at the zombietime zomblog, commenter buzzsawmonkey has outdone himself with this ode to a LunGFish.

Your Last Posting
(Los Angeles)

–apologies to Robert Browning and “My Last Duchess”

That’s your last posting ever on this blog,

And henceforth your account is blocked. You’ll dog

My site no further with your words; your nic

Is banished, and I gave your posts the stick.

You know I’ll call your banning here a “flounce”
Though I’ve been waiting for some time to pounce
On your account, and with prevarications
Distort and demonize your observations.
The Toad Hall where you reveled, if you please’ll
Be given entire to the stoats and weasels,

My countenance beaming on each one that
Comes to me bearing tales of Mole or Rat,

Or Badger, or…sockpuppet. No, ‘t was not

This writing only, placed you on the spot

And caused me to invoke the ban: perhaps

You chanced to differ with my own claptrap
And stick to your position, or dispute
Conventional wisdoms to which repute

I’ve lately granted. Don’t you dare to say

That I or my site might have lost their way
Obsessing on my personal vendettas;

I am neither forgiving nor forgetter,

And will not brook a failure of obesiance

By anyone I feel owes me allegiance.
Yes, I took Rather down, on grounds that he
Could not support what he claimed factually;
But now I set my sights at lower bar
(On personalities, not things that are)
While I squat ‘midst the wreckage I have made
Like mad Kurtz ruling from his bush stockade,
Ringed ’round with skulls. For I no longer deign
To weigh a fact itself; instead, maintain

That source determines truth, and to that end
The nature of veracity I bend,
Citing to midden-heaps of rankness such

That I would not long since have scorned to touch.

A turtle is a lizard in a shell,
And I, lord of my self-created hell

Remain King Yertle of the Turtle Stack

Exalted on my Posting Turtles’ backs–
Yet conscious, as I proclaim my renown

It’s just posting turtles, all the way down,

Which is why I respond with rage and fear

Should anyone mouth what I deem a sneer

Or contradiction. So I flip a switch,
And all posts stop together, with a bitch

Given reign of my elegant designs.

Yet, if I still retained but half a spine

I would despise appearing to be led

As I now seem to, by the lesser head.

Hark! Look you! See how Glenn Beck weeps!

Do you not loathe the company he keeps
Regardless of whatever he might say?
Here is the global warming word today; 

Do not dissent, the banning stick is toward
I care for no voice save that of accord!