Muse, O Muse, edumacate

me, so I can write a poem:

Maybe those dead gods from across the sea can inspire me.

Set can set me up

With Isis in the back seat, and Osiris in the trunk,

Then I can learn me the arts of erotion.

And with Minerva I can cloak the emotion

In erudition and write like Pound.

Anubis can teach me to write like Plath,

Or maybe Byron in a bad mood.

Old Tlaloc can bathe me in blood, but he’s from Mexico

And all that’s come out of there is One Trillion Years of Aloneitude, or

something.

Maybe Si Wang-mu, Royal Mother of the West, can teach me to create like Li Po,

But he’s a little dry for my taste: only the wind of the immortals and

bones of the Tao.

No meat on him.

Hey, there’s a god who’s worth looking to: Thor.

He can smash stuff…

…Well, maybe he’s not such a poet after all.

Visnu could come to me, and I could be Arjuna,

Or I might end up like his uncles.

Those Hindu gods are poets, but mean.

I think I’ll stay away from them.

Gilgamesh was ⅓ god, but couldn’t stay awake to catch infinity.

Utnapishtim judged him right:

He would probably fall asleep in the middle of inspiring me.

Dead Cthulhu, sleeping in his house at R’yleh,

Now there’s a god worth volumes of poems:

He gets in your head and drains your sanity.

Maybe Dutch Schultz was an aquaintance of his,

But I rather like the order I impose on the universe.

The Bear of old Rus might give me some rhymes,

But I hear he’s in cahoots with a witch.

Lament, O ye masses:

The Gods are dead!

And the Orisises ain’t risin’.