Friday, December 02, 2005

Trunk Line

It’s been a challenging and interesting week, with lots of blogfodder for future posts.  However, time this morning is short and I’m feeling like getting a bit of clarity and precision into my head before embarking on another weekend likely to involve significant festivation and imbibement.  I therefore will defer the stories about the big woman and the street fight, in favor of this smidge of doggerel about elephants.  I hadn’t realized how detail-oriented they were till I read this valuable tome.  It inspired me to propound as follows:

The Elephants of Style
haven’t been around here lately,
leaving carnage in their footprints,
sowing heartbreak with their stately
and imperious disdain,
tiny eyeballs glitter coldly
as the herd fixes upon you
not disuaded or cajoled, le-
aning into you as quarry
while they circle round your doubtlets,
with ironic snorts and snuffles
in their ropy leather outfits,
massive lips upcurled, disgusted,
mythic monsters gone etruscing:
line you up along the ivories
for a bloody viscious tusking -
now the village is deserted,
supper pots on coals yet burning,
you can hear them all around you:
it’s a lesson you are learning,
with your participle dangled
and your clothes old and outdated,
they are closing in around you,
huffing righteousness inflated,
tossing trees aside, uprooted
with their kicking and their trunking -
those White elephants of style
have you down for quite a Strunking. 

Have a good weekend.  Have two, they’re small.