Published January 18, 2012
Gathering Magicks
A pedagogue came rolling down upon the other morn,
questioning my flavor text and jesting but wit scorned –
So many throwaways and blotted strike-through lines
cluttered drifting uselessly as currently defined,
‘til breakthrough in the viewpoint
(of the all-above)
grants new feasibility
to aforementioned fluff.
Thus comes the formerly Esperanto squirrel;
turns out it set off wrongly
down the Continent; from faulty magnet
what a gift did it receive: ‘tis more
a man now – ere a squirrel
did skip along those same Mediterranean shores
that now its door-handle approach
cautiously,
moon-backed and sun-spurned.
I made of it a duplicate
dimensional indeed
less by one in visuals and would it all were so!
For artwork is but forms and seemings
present to the eye,
statistics all satiric lies he fain but would deny
and flavor text! My dubitable trade
bought as a craft by little cardboard slips whose colors
vary, emblems of their form.
Most are fine, save but the classic salmon-like,
though preference is ever-present as one does expect.
But I spoke of worded craft, such as I might put down
in hope I shall ameliorate the cards however slightly.
My overseas acquaintance, the were-squirrel of Spain,
what can I really say of him, in several thoughtful lines?
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Alas, Esperanto is a language separate from Spanish. And here I was hoping it was an intentional reference to the language.
This was a fun poem. A bit difficult to follow (though that may be more from how brain-dead I am at the moment), but still a very fun read. I particularly liked how you carried through elements of the first and second stanza all the way too the end; a lot of poems drop images as soon as they're introduced, which is a shame. I particularly enjoy poems that extend the images all the way to the conclusion, and you definitely did that here.
Esperanto error aside, the one issue I had with this was that some of the inversions, particularly the "that now its door-handle approach" line, were very difficult to even identify as inversions. Most of this of this has to do with the line breaks, I surmise, as well as a sparsity of punctuation in those trouble spots. Right now, fun as this poem is, it isn't as accessible as it could be, which is a shame because you're likely intimidating readers who would otherwise enjoy this poem your flourishes of language and shows of vocabulary.
I can't complain about either, though, since they work so well with the pedagogue bits.