METAPOETICS IV/VI
by Will de Kypia




The Night I Met
The Renegade Muse

Dear Walter Francis Smitherick
Preferred VIP Lifetime Gold Tier
Fan Club Member PVLGT47512,

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


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.

Since my efforts to write poems
had all been abysmal failures I
approached her despairingly.

“I've always wanted—”
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 aware that a modest
honorarium is customarily provided—”

“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 to prove that we actually—”

“OK, you can throw in a dessert though the
photograph won't be of archival quality.

Chemical changes cause colors
to shift and to fade. The emulsion
dries out, cracks, and flakes off.

Our accidental and insignificant
encounter will leave you only a host
of absurd narcissistic delusions.”

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

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

“I don't need to know a thing
about nails, bent or unbent. I want
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 clumsy plagiarist who steals lines
and ideas from the real ones.”

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

“I'm getting quite hungry,
we should eat pretty soon.”

“I'm getting quite thirsty,
we must drink right now.”

And so we did.*

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

On that magical night we two were united as one.

Somehow the Muse came to love or perhaps
merely to respect me and chose to assist this
mortal who had mostly stumbled through his life.

She was not my mentor, she
was my libertine liberator.

Where there was doubt
she instilled arrogance.

Where there was despair
she taught self-interest.

Where there was guilt
she sowed indifference.

And where darkness reigned
we joyfully revelled in sin
while feeling no pain.

Our tryst placed me on
the long and winding road to
becoming the person I am today:

An extraordinarily popular poet with
over a million followers on the internet,
a few poems that are truly his, and enough
smarts not to agonize about the disparity.

I shall forever be grateful to the Muse
for providing her shrewd insights that night
I grimly accepted our race's cruel fate.

The truth is very simple. Also very cruel.
There's no forever, you live until you don't.

And so it goes.

Since we will not awaken to an eternal life
when we die I'd rather be a whore who dwells in
a Hilton than some proud and glorious Milton.

I wish to be aped rather than admired.
May you too indulge in epicurean sensuality
.with an unperturbed, stoical resignation..
.Walter Francis Smitherick...
PS She had lobster, I nibbled brisket,
we both drank a lot of champagne.

For dessert she got
a bit of crème fraîche.
_______________________________

🦞___🥂