Holed Up, or The Hip-Hop Poet’s Revenge

Holed Up, or The Hip-Hop Poet’s Revenge

Christmas doggerel, 2015

 
Father Louis is blessing the writers again
Poets and prosodists, comely good men,
Who quoth and who quaff in the woods where he trod
Typing and tapping in service to God.

Theophilus Woodchuck is burrowing deep
Preparing himself for a long winter’s sleep,
Before hibernating he’s making a plan
To take his revenge on an innocent man.

At cellular level he carries a grudge
Genetic resentment, a merciless judge,
Deoxyribonucleic anger, you see,
In his case directed at you and at me.

From underneath humus he ponders a way
To undertake mayhem on hikers who may
Trod careless atop subterranean dens –
Thoughtless re-enactment of ancestral sins.

He listens quite closely, his ear to the dirt,
Excavating to bring about maximum hurt.
With paws he conceals the lacuna with leaves
To make sure his carefully planned project deceives.

A last backward glance and he’s down the hole
Our Marmota monax rodentian troll,
Retires to his chambers, nibbles a root,
Cheerfully puffs on a thick brown cheroot.

Then what to his wondering ears should be heard
But a passel of writers, a thundering herd –
On Greg and on Maurice, on Dave H. and Paul,
On Silas and Jason, they dash away all!

Our woodchuck dejected, he stubs out his butt,
His work all for naught, no foot in his rut.
But last there comes Fenton, his forehead a-furrow,
Oblivious of the nefarious burrow.

His foot goes in easy, then out with a hop
The fibula cracks with an audible pop.
One step and he falls like an ax-timbered tree
His left ankle dangling, to our woodchuck’s glee.

On Silas! On Jason! Strong splints for his frame,
But no use pretending, he’s really quite lame.
On poets’ broad shoulders he limps to the car
Packs ice on the ankle and heads to E.R.

From the hole left behind them there rises a puff
Theophilus celebrates grandly enough.
This time he’s added a pinch to his stash
He’s laced his fat stogie with medical hash.

So Fenton’s festooning a cherry red cast
Redeeming abuses of ancestors past,
For presents he’s asking on this Yuletide,
A hat sewn from Hermitage woodchuck’s tanned hide.

I leave you to ponder this question profound
Presented to us by the hog in the ground,
Are the rich liberated from history scot-free?
Or does it come roosting on you and on me?