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Click hereAt the very least Patroclus
For whom his friend Achilles wailed
Abused that magnificent armor
For the glory of a noble cause,
But tonight I wail for myself instead
Inside my armored Citroёn.
I earlier professed King's English
To Assistant Professor Bleistein
With eggnog that tasted like swill
During a winter solstice party
Wherein a bevy of graduate students
Recited their primitive verse.
"Gertrude did Keats in the fall by me
With would be poets who would be king
Next term with Kipling," I said
While surreptitiously spitting out
Some foul brie in my paper napkin
To note a surplus of assonance.
Bleistein, I think, agreed with me
Or was nodding at her ass perhaps.
I wasn't quite sure when he left
As I plummeted two more merlots,
One to cleanse the palate of cheese
And the other one for the road.
But the goddam road rose up on me.
What the hell was I thinking? Shit!
I don't know. I don't fucking know!
I didn't see the sonofabitch!
And the medulla just made me vomit
Comeuppance as they shackle me.
There is some great contrast going on here, throughout the whole of the piece. The age in the language of the first stanzas versus a shocking, "bring me back" flurry of cursing in that last stanza. It really drives home something of a magical and elegant (even if unintended) atmosphere of the reading/critique. I worry about the first stanza, though. I wish I better understood its purpose because, to me, the other stanzas were more subtle in their revelations and less forceful with their word choice.