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 During Angstwolf’s third
year of medical school, some weird encephalopathic
virus gripped the student body, causing those
afflicted to spew forth rank, turgid poetry. The victims
would craft tortured odes to the unfairness of life,
to wit: too much assigned reading, long hours at the
books and/or on the wards, too little time for loved
ones. In
the terminal stages of their malady, they would open
a vein and with their blood author cryptic rhyme
schemes, archaic contractions, and cliched metaphors.
Some
became carriers who were able to write paean after
anguished paean without expiring under their own
noxious effluvium.
The essential host for this
epidemic was one Ezra Tonne III, Editor of the
medical student newspaper. Ezra was charismatic and highly
intelligent, a handsome timber wolf with many firmly
held social and political beliefs; his greatest
passion was his vegetarianism. (Angstwolf does not wish to
argue the preposterousness of a vegetarian wolf. As they say in
the medical malpractice biz, res ipsi loquitur.)
Ezra
never missed an opportunity to attempt mass
conversion, using the editorial as his chosen form of
scripture. On a monthly basis we were treated to
lengthy, carefully footnoted essays detailing the
salubrious effects of a vegan diet and the
carcinogenic artery-hardening stroke-inducing effects
of meat. When
such appeals to reason failed to provoke widespread
freezer-purgings, Ezra was forced to take a different
tack:
propaganda.
A Trip to the
Slaughterhouse appeared in our paper with little
fanfare.
Angstwolf imagined Ezra schlepping across the Bay in
a cramped minivan, accompanied by other pasty members
of his vegan dining club; arriving at the East Bay
abattoir they would debark reluctantly and linger at
the front door, each unwilling to be the first to
enter. Every
spot of blood was filth, and in its absence,
they would each think, sanitized. The courteous
tour guide would be coldly professional, and
the workers would, of course, be empty inside.
In his
mind’s eye Angstwolf imagines them dabbing at
tears with lace handkerchiefs; the weaker-stomached
would lurch from the room, longing for an emesis
basin.
Angstwolf remembers one thing very clearly from
Ezra’s article. Ezra was very impressed with the
efficiency of the operation, and commented: Nothing is
wasted here, not even the bones.
Under Ezra’s stewardship,
fetid poetry flourished in the medical school
newspaper. One day, Angstwolf realized that it was
his God-given purpose to make a contribution to the
school newspaper. Our gentle readers will surely not be
startled by the disclosure that it took him less than
an hour to write the following poem.
I
was a Teenage Angstwolf
Mistah
Donahue-- he dead.
Oh,
faithful collie at my feet
Do
not ask me why I weep
For
I might tell you, and you must sleep;
Sometimes
it hurts to feel so deep.
Spring
is the cruelest month, sigh;
Winds
whisper the throbbing question, why
The
swollen hopes of huddled masses,
Hardened
hearts, and real tough classes.
In a
dream I asked the Deity why
She
told me
"Everything
I tell you is a lie,
Including
this."
Her
saffron robes were the color
Of
Existential Panic.
A
toast to my comrades, Sturm und Drang,
Angst
and Ennui, that noble gang
Though
only geists, their spirits sang
They
never forgot for whom the tolled bell rang.
Angstwolf would like to believe
that his poem was an effective vaccine; in reality,
there was a slight drop-off in the number of whiffy
submissions, and certain people began using
pseudonyms. There is, however, one humorous footnote
to this story. Contributions to the paper were made on a
decrepit Mac in the closet-like computer room
adjacent to the Medical School Resource Center. When Angstwolf
uploaded his file, he took the liberty to snoop
around and see what else was being submitted for the
next issue. He is very happy that he committed this
minor indiscretion, because otherwise he would not
have been able to read A Trip to the Whorehouse,
by Anonymous. Angstwolf would prefer to believe that A
Trip to the Whorehouse never got to press due to
its steamy content and not its tangential
relationship to the editor’s previous work. This hugely
funny and tasteless essay concluded with the image of
prostitutes laboring in bugged cubicles; their noises
were recorded for later use in the phone sex
division:Nothing
is wasted here, not even the moans.
My Life in Food: Come for the
recipes, stay for the poetry.
Do you have
some painfully smelly poetry to share? Angstwolf
wants to know! And if it is really bad, he
will post it on these pages... along with whatever
tales you have to tell.
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