The HyperTexts

dis-Able-d Muse

by Michael R. Burch

I wrote the poem below after having been summarily exiled (without a trial or even a hearing) by the person or persons in charge of a site called "Able Muse." I believe he/she/they should consider renaming it "dis-Able-d Muse." Dis is another name for hell; Able was stabbed in the back by his brother; and I would give the site a D for wisdom, justice, decency and etiquette. Now when I try to log into the site, I receive an imperious message that I have been excommunicated forever. My crime? Denying that Imagery is the center of the poetic universe. Shades of Galileo and a a long-forgotten Pope! I had posted a love poem, "Love Has a Southern Flavor," in a sub-forum of Able Muse which is inexplicably called "The Deep End" (it turned out to be a kiddie pool). After a few poets there parroted one of the worst ideas of Modernism in their critiques: that abstract ideas and the word "love" have no place in poetry, I spoke in defense of the loveliest Muse, Erato, on my own website, The HyperTexts. In my poem "Erato, Speared" I pointed out, employing irony, that Able Muse's major interactive forum, Eratosphere, is named after Erato, the abstract personification of erotic love poetry! I was then banished for having said things that made perfect sense, in response to complete nonsense. What sort of people try to ban free speech, but autocrats and fascists? Fortunately in this case the literary fascists are singularly ineffective and unlikely to achieve their scatter-brained aims. (Please keep in mind that I am not condemning the poets of Able Muse in general, but only the ones who acted like Nazis.)

The Intellectual Nazis

The intellectual Nazis
set out (rub-a-dub-dub)
to conquer the world of High Art
(though their U-boat was only a tub
and they'd gnawed their green nails to the nub).

The intellectual Nazis
cried with fanatical glee—
"Der Führer (their best friend, a Critic)
will be quite impressed we’re at sea!"
(Though they’d had to enlist each one’s mommy
’cause their vomit was sickly split-pea
and had soiled their pink-booted sweet jammies.)

The intellectual Nazis
meant to put freedom to rest
by firing salvos, pell-mell,
here, there, everywhere, north, east, south and west,
until they hit something, at last,
good folks would consider quite blessed.

But the intellectual Nazis
became truly lost and confused
and because they had drunk too much schnapps,
they also became over-boozed;
and their weapons had all been defused
by the shipmates their pricks had abused ...
my, how their illusions were bruised!

So at last they conferred with their mommas,
changed into some flowing pyjamas
and professed to be wise Dalai Lamas!

The HyperTexts