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"They know who he was, who bore that name
"with which they burdened him, to their enduring shame."
---Mimsy Borogove, "At The Passing By Of Derogators"

Remember him, whom we called PoodleHead,
or Geek, or Dweeb, or Nerd, or even Faggot:
he was the scawny kid who stared too much
(in wartime or peacetime) at the stars,
at beautiful sorority girls,
at us when our remarks cut too close---
as if his four-eyed stare could dare dismiss us.
He was the egghead who turned the class discussions
to something unexpected, something unstudied.
He could not walk very fast,
nor carry very many books.
On weekends when the library was closed,
he suffered alone and silent in his solitary room.

We were the Brothers of Fraternity, start to finish
and Masters of the Party:
power drinkers, serial fornicators,
smokers of tons of tobacco and pot;
rock and roll was performed for us alone;
and higher education was a drug's induction.
The campus was our private domain;
its buildings, our sites of assignation;
its women, any of its women---
satisfiers of our various, voracious lusts.

Worldly though we were, we were not exactly
adequately prepared for the outside world.
Cirhossis invaded some of us;
auto-immune disease violated others;
testicular cancer took Straight-Up Pete without warning;

Ashtray Bob died only three months after
surgery removed his tumerous jaw.

Poodlehead sat on the top floor of the bank,
writing decisions in legal language
we could have never interpreted;
writing his stupid verses, short-long short-long,
in lines we would never have cared to read.

His poems seem to have a life of their own.

Lustful, lascivious women,

clad in translucent lingerie and stockings,

dance in circles around me, laughing

because they are just beyond my reach.
I have seen the huge, bronze android striding
over the rooftops of various business towers,

searching, relentlessly searching for me,

keeping track of and recording my comings and goings.
In a darkened alley, a ghastly thing---

striped, hairy, and vaguely arachnid,
slobbering in its web, its red eyes blazing---
weaves a shroud of sticky silk in my shape and size.
And Jack the Ripper, presently a slum lord,
still feels the urge toward murder unabated.
A vengeful pleasure brings him nearby
I think he is ready and anxious to gloat,

at the kind of sport he most enjoys,
He ignores my shaken, pleading voice
as his carefully sharpened sword flashes an arc,
and deftly shears right through my throat.

Starward

[jlc]