for Alexander Pope
This week we learned that Art Carney, played by Norton,
committed Canadian honeymooners on the north side of the falls
to make common cause with England and France
in recognizing an ontologically non-existent entity
as a hypothetical "state"
with a proviso stating that the reference may be to the "state"
of mind of a late-night comedian who may lose his job
because he isn't funny. A similar statement issued like frogs
from a gargoyle's mouth in London, where Keer Stormtrooper
was caught reading Extra Pound's book Jefferson and/or Mussolini.
France's president Macaroni was accused of being married
to a man, which is not against the law, and is probably nonsense,
but the blow to the vanity of the man was considerable,
and the female gaze at the wife was considered
to be as blonde as the distinction between the jeans you wear
and the genes you don't, in either case a distraction
from the debacle of a debate pitting the Pasta prez
against an "all hat, no cattle" urban cowboy. We will
therefore continue to punish murderers unless they kill
in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
— Voltaire, trans. Otto Harbinger
Ed. note: In the translation from the French, the rhymes in imitation of Pope's couplets had to be sacrificed for the sense to come through.