father of the modern shit poem,
croaks off.
Mazdas and Fiats barrel past him
as he lies helpless and beyond saving
in the middle of La Rue Merde.
The young Strophe could scald the soul
with his grim, fiery fables--
"Cockroach Floating In A Backed-Up Sink"
won him legions of alienated young fans,
and made him the undisputed master
of random allusion.
Lifted from the pavement, and placed,
too late, into a waiting ambulance,
Strophe is already being eulogized.
Pen & Quill laments, "Like his poems,
Strophe's death would seem to mean something--
but what?"
Indignant, heartbroken female fans throw themselves,
and roses,
at the emergency vehicle as it trolls slowly away
toward eternal fame and routine embalming.
The women carry Strophe's later, softer works
close to their little valentine hearts
like brain-damaged kittens.
Oh, the sharp grief
for the loss of the adequate word at the right time!
His publishers immediately issue a luxurious, leather bound edition,
and advertise it in the coupon sections
of Sunday newspapers across the nation.
How tiresome a world,
without Strophe's genius for
paint-by-numbers, derivative drollery!
Little is said about Strophe's "blue period",
or his heaps of paeans to carnal love
in which
no twitch
of anything truly erotic can be detected,
thus pacifying the church, and parents,
both of which endorse him for their fragile,
malleable
children to read.
Let us remember a man of letters!
Who better to speak for Strophe, than Strophe himself!
"Perplex-ed I am, when the crumb of life is to much,
And the mountain climb-ed behind us
Shrinks puny before my flaming love as I cry,
Your the one! Adieu!"
Jennings Mulderhorn Strophe
1926-2012
bringing shit poetry
to an adoring world!
_____
my word list was: sharp, indignant, detect, tiresome, luxury, malleable, fable, perplex, grim and scald.