METAPOETICS IV/VI
by Will de Kypia




The Night I Met
The Banished Muse

Dear Walter Francis Smitherick
Preferred Lifetime Gold Elite
Fan Club Member PLGE4708,

I trust that this recollection of a hugely
significant episode in my evolution as a poet
will be of considerable interest to you and to
all the other loyal Smithereens out there.
~

I saw her when I stepped into
a dingy dive bar while making my
usual rounds one rainy Friday night.

She was sitting alone, nursing a fizzy
drink with a bright red cherry in it,
flaunting her perky pentameters.

My efforts to write poetry had
been detestable failures so I
approached her in despair.

“I want to be—”
I started to say.

“Everyone wants!”
she snarked back.

“Yet I'm unable to—”

“Your want lacks talent.”

“If you'd let me feel your—”

“In your wet dreams, wannabe.”

“Of course I'm willing to provide an
appropriate remuneration for your—”

“Dinner and drinks will earn you the right
to unzip my toga and ogle my pentameters.
For lobster and champagne, you may fondle.”

“Plus a Polaroid photo to prove we actually—”

“OK, you can throw in a dessert though
the picture will not be of archival quality.

Over time, chemical changes will cause the
colors to shift and to fade. The emulsion itself
will eventually dry out, crack, and flake off.

This accidental, inconsequential, and brief
encounter of ours will leave you only that ratty
relic and some madly narcissistic delusions.”

“I cherish mementos and
and believe the patina of age
enhances the esthetic—”

“You don't know the difference
between the patina of age
and a bent, rusty nail.”

“I do not have to know a thing
about nails, bent or unbent. I plan
to be a poet, not a carpenter.

I will listen to the stones, listen
to the clouds, listen to my soul, and
write hot smoky words of fire.”

“You'll never be a real poet, just
a clownish plagiarist stealing lines
and tropes from the real ones.”

“You'll never return to Parnassus
because after your latest visit there
you're a lady destined for Hades.”

“I'm getting hungry,
I need to eat soon.”

“I'm getting thirsty,
I need a drink now.”

So we ate and we drank and we...
~
**
*It was a dark and stormy night when
I met the Muse and we supped together.
We shared much more than the meal.

For a single tempestuous night we two
were as one. The Muse deigned to counsel a
mortal who seemed born to be a failure.

Her guidance was simple,
somber, and and salutary.

“We divinities are unlike you mortals
for we are always joyful, exist for eternity,
and are essentially untouched by time.

You are half-alive until you die and
after you die you are still nothing. Your
life is nasty, brutish, and pointless.

This is the true golden rule for mortals:

Dream as if you will live forever,
live as if you will die tomorrow.

On earth that is all you need to know.”

She was not merely a mentor, she
was my fallen libertine liberator.

Where there had been guilt
the Muse taught me arrogance.

Where there had been doubt
she instilled indifference.

Where there had been despair
she sowed self-involvement.

Our tryst set me firmly upon the
long and winding road to transforming
myself into the person I chose to become.

Since we mortals will not awaken to an
eternal life after we die I decided to be a
whore who resides in Hiltons instead of
one more proud and glorious Milton.

By any means necessary.

I indeed became a renowned poet with
four million+ faithful followers on Facebook,
a few poems I can truly call my own, and enough
wisdom to be unvexed by that hilarious disparity.

But I am gray haired and grizzled.
My life is approaching its dead end.

So it goes.

As I bid farewell to carnality I hope to be aped
rather than admired. May you too enjoy epicurean
sensuality.with a dispassionate, stoical resignation.
Walter Francis Smitherick...
PS: For dinner the Muse had lobster,
I nibbled brisket, and we both
drank a lot of champagne.

For dessert I gave her a
serving of crème fraîche.

And I sincerely pray she can
find some way to avoid spending
the rest of her eternity in Hades.
_______________________________

🦞________🥂