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Delta40
11-04-2010, 06:08 PM
He saw himself as the salvation
of fallen women;
those soft, child like beings in need
of the relief from healing hands.
The reverend was eaten by a performing lion
before he could convince the church
he had been stiffed by photographic evidence.

She wrote the book of
Prophecy or the Rare and Wonderful Doctrine.
It contained the cure for
Glimmering of the gizzard
Quavering of the kidneys
and the Wombling trot.
Her street corner antics
became her dead end.

He had one pox
and one clap too many.
Thankfully his spanish dwarf
and dog Fartleberry
helped make spoil of young maidens
who hoped to advance themselves.
Finally his pustules exploded.

She drowned in the humdrum
of domestic existence.
A Canterbury shoemaker
was no match for her.
Debauched and working the street,
she relieved gentlemen and scoundrels.
The Old Bailey had no patience.

Loneliness and hunger
plunged him into self-pity
when his works were not authenticated.
He destroyed his masterful forgeries
and took a dose of arsenic
reserved for the gigantic rats
who infested his attic.

She rendered her husband impotent
by means of hocus-pocus.
Justice found her in a gutter
outside a public house.
Her throat was slashed and a half sovereign
stuck between her teeth.
A fitting end for any blackmailer.

Accused of wizardry,
The court found he had made a deal
with the devil rather than with God.
He was bound and wrapped in the same way
as his own countless victims
and lay gently in the river.
He floated like every poor woman before him.
Thus his fate was sealed.

The cramp, the Stitch
The Squirt, the Itch
The Gout the Stone the Pox
The Mulligrub, The Bonny Scrubs
And all Pandora's Box
earned her a hanging at Tyburn

Jerrybaldy
11-04-2010, 07:08 PM
Epic Delta. Victorian, Dickensian. Where do you get these visions? I have no idea how you transport yourself there and write of mulligrub and fartleberry. Mrs Dickens it seems kept chickens and loved vegimite.
kudos
JerryB

PrinceMyshkin
11-05-2010, 03:28 PM
An astounding poem, outstanding even among your often unique and passionately outraged ones. I wonder whether each of these is an actual historic figure one might recognize?

Some of your more unusual words are like rough-edged stones, especially here:


The cramp, the Stitch
The Squirt, the Itch
The Gout the Stone the Pox
The Mulligrub, The Bonny Scrubs
And all Pandora's Box
earned her a hanging at Tyburn

Delta40
11-05-2010, 05:12 PM
I wish I could attribute the last stanza entirely to me but alas it was the catch-cry of the woman who sold foul-tasting cures on street corners

verse 5 is about Thomas Chatterton. I was thinking of starting a discussion on master forgers on lit-net to get a view of what other people think of them.

PrinceMyshkin
11-05-2010, 07:50 PM
I wish I could attribute the last stanza entirely to me but alas it was the catch-cry of the woman who sold foul-tasting cures on street corners

verse 5 is about Thomas Chatterton. I was thinking of starting a discussion on master forgers on lit-net to get a view of what other people think of them.

Peter Ackroyd wrote a novel about the life of Chatterton.