Those poor goldfish, put on display most immodestly then blended to death:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...fish_blender_1

Your challenge: write an elegy for these poor critters or any other critter, real or imagined, who met a bizarre and untimely death.

Here rests his head upon the frappe of earth,
A fish to swim within the blender’s drone
That liquified at once his body’s worth,
Making milkshakes of his fins and bone.

Gold were his scales, and golden were his gills;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
For misery, he gave a soul that spills.
For Art, he threw his own self in the blend.

No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode.
He learned what every little goldfish knows:
There’s more out there to kill you than a rod.

Oh faithful fish, once glitter-skinned
and sleek of fin, your innocence
displayed in a blender's pale belly...
by what design were you consigned
to be spun gold?

The waters soon began to spin
He watched the walls blend with the floor
His final thought was odd to him,
‘This isn’t Kansas anymore.’

What kind of sickened little piss
Drops fish in blenders, anyway?
Whose mind's as nearly sick as his
Who pushed the button marked ‘Puree’.

So here lies Goldy, so devout
Don’t tip the coffin - he’ll pour out.




[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited May 21, 2003).]

MS. Found in a Blender

I know he said that art should shock
and rearrange the senses,
I figured that was just a crock
to scramble my defenses.
I even knew I'd have to shill
to get the show all fixed up
but now I can’t tell vent from gill,
I’m so completely mixed up.

O, Marco, sure someone once said,
“Take life for inspiration.” Though
if you can't understand, at least
please misconstrue that like Van Gogh
- don’t take it out on bird or beast -
go off and off yourself, instead.

While I admit affinity
'twixt us and the artiste,
I much prefer sanguinity
in goldfish by Matisse.

At Trapholt fish have been pureed,
for art, inside a Moulinex.
No bourgeoisie got epateed,
in fact the bastards pulled the switch.
Don't blame them, though. They’d had their fill
of artists making all the swill.

-- Frank



[This message has been edited by FOsen (edited May 23, 2003).]

Seems much better suited to metrical than non-met, but here's an attempt at a non-goldfish...

* * * * * * * *

The raven, perched upon a powerline,
took flight with wings too widely spread,
touched off, and now lies in a pile
of well-burnt featherbits,
his charcoal plumage charcoaled.

(Whoopee, this one was actually accepted for publication in LIGHT Quarterly, so I'm yanking it.)




[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited October 12, 2003).]

I apologize for this not being an elegy...but it IS about a golden fish.


"To His Coi Mistress"

Had we but pond enough and slime
Your virtue, dear, would be no crime.
I wouldn’t have to whine and harp
Of being but a lowly carp,
While you're above the hoy polloi,
Since being born a golden coi.
No, we would skim along the mud
As our kind did before the Flood.
My patience, then, would not abate,
Or pressure you, my love, to mate.
A thousand summers would have gone
‘Ere once I made a move to spawn.
A thousand springs, indeed, would go
Before I tried to seed your roe.

But at my dorsal side I hear
Time’s trolling motor humming near
And soon, before us, as we look
Are endless nets , and countless hooks.
Then, baiting worms will be to try
Our long-preserved virginity.
Thus we, whose loins never abutted,
Would sadly rue it, as we’re gutted.
And think of how you would regret it,
To have your maiden beauty breaded.

So, now, then, while thy golden form
Has made my ardent zeal to warm,
Secrete thine eggs into the mire
To kindle my erotic fire.
And I, excited, will in turn
Add clouds of my aquatic sperm.
And here, then, in our tidal chasm,
We’ll shudder in a fervent spasm.
Then if we can’t make Time stand by
Our joy, by God, will make it fly!



[This message has been edited by Lightning Bug (edited July 17, 2003).]

Good job, peoples, keep 'em coming. L-Bug, that's a fine parody indeed.

Not an elegy, but a true tale of a sorry event that befell the neighbouring Falconry Centre.

The peregrine sulked as she sat in her cage,
a malevolent glare in her eye
at the falconer, seething with impotent rage
at her sullen refusal to fly.

The public had paid for the daily display
of the bird's aerobatical skill,
but the falconer gloomily turned them away
saying, Sorry, the peregrine's ill.

The bird kept on sulking, ignoring her food,
and was losing both feathers and weight,
till her poor frazzled keeper was forced to conclude
she was dying for want of a mate.

She falls off her perch and our revenue ends
(he observed) and the future's a blank.
So a tercel was found, with the help of his friends
and a sizeable loan from the bank.

The tercel (that's in-speak for masculine hawk)
soon arrived via Falcon Express.
When the peregrine saw him she uttered a squawk
which the falconer read as a Yes.

Her woeful demeanour, her pitiful hunch
disappeared at the drop of a hat.
She pounced on her suitor and ate him for lunch,
saying, Gosh, I feel better for that!

(A truism, one you've undoubtedly heard,
says a luncheon will never come free.
But a grand and a half for a wimp of a bird
is the teeniest bit OTT.)


[This message has been edited by EREME (edited May 28, 2003).]