It was perhaps unsporting of me in my last post to lampoon the appalling of writing in other people’s Usenet posts. Not only that, it was an egregious case of throwing stones in glass houses. Back then, when I was arguably still young and undeniably immature, I fancied myself a poet and posted my stuff on the net.

If anyone is inclined to blackmail me, they don’t have to have gotten a hold of that photo of me jumping naked out of a cake at Pablo Escobar’s bachelor party (which isn’t even all that damning because I had a cute butt back then). They need only do a newsgroup-archive search on Google to find poetry of mine that would make a Vogon blush. Can’t this information be sealed in the interests of national security?

Actually, there was poem I wrote back then that isn’t completely worthless. I think the reason it turned out to be something other than complete drivel was the subject matter. For once, I decided to shift focus away from my usual existential “woe is me” crap that plagued my other work.

Much of the credit goes to my friend Kirk for this. We were hanging out talking one night, up late after ingesting large amounts of…uh…caffeine, yeah, that’s it. He told me of a news story he read about a young girl who died on a merry-go-round.

What happened was that a poisonous snake had crawled inside one of the wooden horses before it was crated and shipped. When the horse was attached to the carousel, the snake was still inside. The girl got on and the ride started. The snake, irritated by all the commotion, decided to register a complaint in her exposed leg. The girl called out to her father, claiming the horse was biting her. The father, realizing that children are frequently full of shit, decided to ignore her. The ride ended and she fell over dead.

How awfully tragic. How delectably Freudian. Here was a poem that was just dying to be written. Enjoy:

The Biting Horse
“The horse keeps biting me Daddy,” she cried
As the carousel went around and around
Her father just waved as the horses swept by
As he heard her call out, he made this reply
“Hush yourself girl; try enjoying the ride.”
“But the horse keeps biting me Daddy,” she cried

And the horse that she rode went up and went down
Where inside lay snakes in the hollowed-out wood.
The motion upset them and they struck where they could
“The horse keeps biting me Daddy,” she cried
“Wooden horses can’t bite,” so her pleas were denied

And after that, she made not a sound
But the serpents kept biting and tears filled her eyes
As poisonous fangs penetrated her thighs
Darkness consumed her from a numbness inside
As she felt the horse biting on that horrible ride

When the ride stopped, she slid to the ground
Her father ran to her and knelt on the floor
The poor little girl was breathing no more
The words haunt his life from the day that she died
“The horse keeps biting me Daddy,” she cried.