Poetic License

Freedom means absence of restraint. License means taking advantage of it.

"You would learn very little in this world if you were not allowed to imitate. And to repeat
your imitation until some solid grounding in the skill was achieved and the slight but wonderful
difference — that made you you and no one else — could assert itself."
-- Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

So ...

Accentual-Alliterative:

• Hormonally Pigmented Puppets on Parade (2020)
• Bogusword (2020)

(sort-of) Sprung Rhythm:

• Pigment's Hour Proclaimed (2020)

Ottava Rima:

• Oath of Avarice (2014)
• The Muddled Ages (2020)
• Old-Trick Ponies (2024)

Shakespearean Sonnet Style:

• Anticipating Anonymity (2024)

John Donne Holy Sonnet Style:

• Inconspicuous Conclusions (2024)

Uncategorized for 2024:

• Fathers and Dads (2024)
• In 'Defense' of Loot and Lost Lives (2024)
• Existential Existence Exemplified (2024)

Iambic Hexameter

• Toiling for Cicadas (2024)

Alexandrine Couplets

• Anatomy (or Autopsy) of an Alexandrine (2024)
• Cyrano and "Cyrano" (2024)
• A Cornucopia of Existential Threats (2024)
• Freedom to Vote for the Vapid and Vicious (2024)

Uncategorized for 2023:

• Collaborators in Conspicuously Cruel Cupidity (2023)
• Tremulous Twin Tributaries (2023)
• Prologue to a Puking (2023)
• Sardonic Slogans (2023)
• Mission Leap (2023)
• Turmoil in a Toilet Bowl (2023)
• Divine Ammunition (2023)
• Covert Auction (2023)
• Mission Accomplice (2023)
• When Maps Become the Territory (2023)
• Expletive Deleted (2023)
• Accurate Acerbic Acronyms (2023)
• Ornery the Ape (2023)
• Vladimir and Epithet (2023)
• Washington’s Wonder Warriors (2023)
• Invidious Comparisons (2023)
• Jet Stream Bloviating (2023)
• State of the Urine (2023)
• Grungy, Grim (2023)
• War Drek: the Wrath of Can't (2023)
• Sordid Chancre (2023)
• Birds of a Cuckoo’s Feathered Nest (2023)

Uncategorized for 2022:

• In The Media of Record (2022)
• High Time to Cry (2022)
• Subterranean Coronation of the Clueless (2022)
• Genius Gopher "War" Planning (2022)
• Stud Hamster Heroism(2022)
• "Intelligence" à la carte (2022)
• They Get What You Pay For (2022)
• Oath of Orifice (2022)

Uncategorized for 2021:

• Hoisting the Hero (2021)
• Of Isaacs and Newtons (2021)
• The Ordering of Base Rules (2021)
• Rambo and Popeye Teach 'Russkies' a Lesson (2021)
• Schlock and Awful (2021)
• Corporate Career Camouflage (2021)
• Tail Lights in the Tunnel (2021)
• Double-Dog-Dare-You Appropriations (2021)
• Liquidated through Lexical Larceny (2021)
• Seizure Class Frantic Fear-Flogging (2021)
• State-Secret Sadism (2021)
• Holy Herd Management (2021)
• A Physiology of the Phrase (2021)
• This time we meant to kill you (2021)
• Another Odious Occupation Implodes (2021)
• Imperial Anathema (2021)
• Special Snowflake Political Trauma (2021)
• The WOKE Bait and Switch (2021)
• Spitting Image (2021)

Uncategorized for 2020:

• Vladimir Putin’s DNA Detected (2020)
• Exogenous Expropriation of the Execrable (2020)
• Hidden Fingers (2020)
• Problematic Patriarchy (2020)
• Vladimir The Competent vs Joe-Donald Duck (2020)
• Tricky Joe McCarthy's Dick (2020)
• Chowder Brain and Lightweight or Orange Man Bad (2020)
• Assiduously Apathetic (2020)
• Anal Retentive Android (2020)
• Necrocide's Restoration (2020)
• Playing Along For Now (2020)
• Vacuuous Ventriloquism (2020)
• A Pair of Petrarchan Polemics (2020)
• Desultory Aftermarth (2020)
• Military Idolatry (2020)

Uncategorized for 2019:

• "Lemming Heroism at the Impeachment (2019)
• "Shakespeare," in Russian (2019)
• Of Ice and Men (2019)
• Unholy Meditation (2019)
• Lard of the Fries (2019)
• Triadic Tongue Twisters (2019)
• From the Latin, Mistranslated (2019)
• Karmic Journey (2019)
• Star Chamber, Incorporated (2019)
• Useful Idiot (2019)
• Sovereign Eunuchs (2019)
• Driving the Money-Changers INTO the Temple (2019)
• The Shit-Splattered Bungle (2019)
• No Left, Just Right (2019)
• A Parody of Product-Placement Propaganda (2019)
• A Dreadful Success (2019)
• Fanboy Fascism (2019)
• Poverty Draft (2019)

Uncategorized for 2018:

• Another Commander-in-Brief (2018)
• Twelve Sets of Footprints on the Moon (2018)
• Epistle to the Expendables (2018)
• Always Moving to the Right (or, "Center") (2018)
• The Top of the Greasy Pole (2018)
• Commendation Accumulation Syndrome (2018)
• Ordnance Expenditure Expeditions (2018)
• Morbid Dick (2018)
• Optional Orthodoxy (2018)
• Chimera Coalition (2018)
• A Badly Managed Perception (2018)
• Flaccid Phallic Fulminations (2018)
• Hardly Heroic Corporate Couplets (2018)
• Leisure Class Lemmings (2018)
• Cross-Cultural Sino-Americanisms (2018)
• Take-it-or-Take-it "Choices" (2018)

Uncategorized for 2017:

• Thank You for Your Servility (2017)
• Kicking the Memory Syndrome (2017)

Ballad:

• The Ballad of Rawhide Randy (2010)

From a decade's worth of commentary on The Barrow-downs Discussion Forum:
Inspired by conversations relating to movies "based on" the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien

• Elvish Erectile Dysfunction (2011)
• Androgynous Casting Calls (2011)
• Implausible Cliché Scenarios (2011)
• The Lovely Elf-Chick Security Guard (2011)
• Itaril and the Thirteen Dwarves (2011)
• Of Pseudonyms for Misnomers (2011)
• Murkwood Mary Sue (2011)
• Elvish STDs (2011)
• Featured Bug (2011)
• Legolas and Tauriel (2011)
• A Name by any other Name (2011)
• The gift that won't stop giving (2011)
• Opening Up The Empty (2011)
• Unrequited Elf/Dwarf Libido (2016)
• Fast-Food Fulminations on televised Fan Fiction (2017)
• Glittering Fool's Gold (2017)
• Available for Future Sexploitation (2020)
• There and Here and There Again (2020)
• Lord of the Rights (2021)
• Demiurge Dementia (2021)
• The Undying Dirt (2021)
• Apotheosis of Existential Odor (2021)
• WOKE "Warriors" Awaken! (2022)
• Miss Congealed Hostility (2022)
• Some Wanderers ARE Truly Lost (2022)

In the Pantoum style:

• "The Forms Must Be Obeyed" (2022)

In the Gaelic Bardic style:

• Bread and Circuses (2004)
• They Also Serve (2004)
• Dragon's Teeth (2004 - 2014)
• Cutting, Running, Staying, and Cursing (2006)
• Roses for Ramadi (2006)
• Escalating Sacrifice (2008)

In the style of the Alexander Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin":

• Vacuum-packed Verbosity (2024)
• Imperial Infections (2024)
• Elective Selections (2024)
• Virtual Media "Victories" (2024)
• Hostage to Catatonia (2023)
• Perfidious Albion’s Precarious Performance (2023)
• Contrived Collective Unconsciousness (2023)
• Hegemonic Equestrian Euthanasia (2022)
• Red Lines and Red-Baiting (2022)
• Make-it-up-as-you-go-along Gulag (2021)
• Orwellian Travesty Foretold (2021)
• A Pestilential Debate (2016)
• Tag-Team Twosome (2018)

In the style of the traditional Mad Song "Tom O'Bedlam":

• The Misfortune Teller (2006)

In the style of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner":

• An Elderly Sailor's Saga (2005)

In the style of Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came":

• A Munificent Travesty (2009)

In the style of Keats' "The Belle Dame Sans Merci":

• The Damn Belle Sans Souci (2008)

In the style of Swinburne's "A Forsaken Garden":

• A Mistaken Pardon (2009)

Irate explorations in Iambic Pentameter:

• Lunatic Leviathan (2005)
• A Sorry Solipsistic Siren Song (2006-2015)
• Metrics for Measure (2009)

In the Japanese Haiku Style:

• Chronic Cupidity (2023)
• Let Nancy be Ronald (2022)
• Hanoi Haiku (2006)
• Insignificance (2010)

Couplets:

• Pimpin' with the Prezidint (2006)
• Jaded Jingoistic Jingles (2006)
• Left Behind by Jesus (2006)
• Lies Damned Eyes and Statistics (2006)
• For Whom the Moving Finger Writes (2007)
• Nancy the Negotiator (2007)
• Reactionary Rodent Regency (2008)
• "All In" on a Bad Hand (2008)
• Immortality (2015)
• A Fear of Phobias (2018)
• Hardly Heroic Corporate Couplets (2018)
• Playing Tennis with the Net Down (2019)

All-lines-rhymed couplet/tercet/quatrain:

• Stud Hamster from Texas (2006)
• Maverick Cerberus (2018)
• Mnemonic Feet (2019)

Employing the Trochee (accented-unaccented) stress pattern:

• Gargoyles and Grotesques (2009)

In the style of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night":

• Virtuous Vapidity (2024)
• Vicarious Voting (2024)
• A Vicious Circle Villanelle (2008)

In the style of Percey Shelley's "Ozymandias" and "England in 1819":

• Cozy, Scandalous (2009)
• Oceania in 2023 (2023)

In the Double-Dactyl verse format:

• Stenographers' Assange Envy (2021)
• Free Bradley Manning (in forty-four syllables) (2012)

Animist Existentialism

• Dog's Plan (2005)
• Statutory Religion (2006)
• Ichthyological Metaphysics 2009)
• Scapegoat Job Application (2008)
• One Nation Under Dog (2011)
• Pan Galactic Party Pooper (2006)

After the examples of popular song lyrics:

• Buffaloed Girl (2006)
• Baghdad is Broken 2006)
• Who Lost Iraq? (2006)
• Liar's Lullabye (2006-2012)
• Here Come the Frowns (2009)
• When Jaundice Comes Marching Home (2012)
• The American Precedent (2022)

In the style of George Orwell's "Beasts of England":

• Beasts of My Land (2006-2009)

Experiments in so-called "Free Verse":

• Better Maimed than Marxist (2012)

Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism:

• America the Dutiful 2005)
• Dead Metaphors (2005)
• Soldier's Soldier (2005)
• Deputy Dubya's Droopy Diaper Rap (2005)
• Ebb and Flow (2005)
• Extra Crispy Chicken-Hawk Turkey (2005)
• Buyer's Remorse (2006)
• Bring Home the Buy Time Brigade (2006-2012)
• Let's Already Do It Again (2007)
• A Scapegoat on Horseback (2007)
• An Ersatz Commander in Knickers (2007)
• Custer's Next Stand (2007)
• Mad Dog John McCain Bombs Again (2007-2008)
• Deputy Dubya Doubles Down (2008)
• Thanks for Nothing (2009)
• Neck Deep in the Big Sandy (2009)
• Near Misses (2009)
• The Terrible Worm in his Iron Cocoon (2009)
• Another Catastrophic Success (2011)
• Sacred Surgical Strikes (2014)
• A Glib Giddy Ghoul / Goldwater's Girl (2015)

Miscellaneous:

• Exit Stage Right (2005)
• Feed the Beast (2006)
• Woeful World (2007)
• Gullible's Travails (2007)
• A Bridge to Erehwon (2008)
• Marching Backwards Through Georgia (2008)
• A Diurnal Dialectic (2009)
• Maligned Madam Does Fox News (2009)
• The Good Ship Memory Hole (2009)
• Changing Commanders in Brief (2009)
• Queen-of-Hearts Injustice (2009)
• Fall and Autumn to a Child Born Old (2009)
• Mere Looking (2009)
• Buffaloed Boy (2010)
• Congentital Stockholm Syndrome (2011)
• A Mall and the Night Visitors (2012-2021)

Whimsy:

• A Yellow Bravery (2009)
• Progressive Composition (2009)
• Melodious Mnemonics (2010)
• One Day at the Restaurant (2010)
• Permanents (2010)

Manufactured Mendacity and Managed Mystification:

• The inflated Style as Euphemism (2010)
• Truthful Cretan Liars (2010)
• Managing the Mushrooms (2012)
• Official Semantic Spaghetti (2012)

Quatrains:

• Ad Astra Ex Machina (2004, 2022)
• The Tunnel at the End of the Light (2005)
• Flowers for Falluja (2005)
• Maybe or Maybe Not (2005)
• Syndromes of Wisdom (2005)
• Reactionary R and R (2006)
• The Tipping Point Turns the Corner (2006)
• Mini Green Zone Outpost Diaspora (2007)
• Stud Hamster Two-Step (2007)
• This Time For Sure (2007)
• Moron Whack-a-Mule (2008)
• The Silence of the Lamb Chops (2008)

Terza Rima sonnets in homage to Dante Aligheiri and Percy Shelley:

• Before Inferno's Gate (2009)
• The Circus that Wouldn't Leave Town (2012)
• Disputatious Dilettantes (2018)
• Worshipping the Whip (2018)
• The Ruling Crassness (2020)
• Masticating the Multitudes (2021)
• Downing Street / D.C. Dissimulation (2022)
• A Putin Paragraph Paraphrased (2022)
• American Proclivities (2023)

"The Triumph of Strife":

• A Clockwork Phoenix Epiphany (lines 1-112
• Dragooned and Bullied Ex-Patriot (lines 113-154)
• Batman Sleeps with a Nightlight (lines 155-168)
• For Whom No Bell Tolls (lines 169-196)
• Sandbagging Fence Sitters (lines 197-238)
• Hothouse Orchids (lines 239-294)
• The Times that Buy Men's Souls (lines 295-350)
• A Disassembled Dialectic (lines 351-378)
• A Commander in Brief (lines 379-420)
• Duped by a Dimwit (lines 421-448)
• Return of the REMF (lines 449-476)
• A Plain Spoken Pain (lines 477-490)
• Green Glasses (lines 491-504)
• Paradise Colonized (lines 505-518)
• Wag the Car (lines 519-532)
• Too Good to Pet the Dog (lines 533-560)
• Titanic Ice Cubes (lines 561-574)
• The Gelded Age (lines 575-588)
• Missing and Presumed Larcenous (lines 576-616)
• Messianic Maniac (lines 617-644)
• Primitive Word Magic (lines 645-672)
• Kool-Aid Cure for Crusaders (lines 673-700)
• The Fog of Warbucks (lines 701-728)
• Flogging a Flawed Figure of Speech (lines 729-812)
• The Usual Scapegoat (lines 813-840)
• Good Enough for the Gutter (lines 841-854)
• Syndrome's Revenge (lines 855-868)
• A Fool Rushes In (lines 869-896)
• Managed Mystification (lines 897-952)
• King George the Worst (lines 953-1022)
• Controversial Stink Tank Scholarship (lines 1023-1050)
• Albino Pachyderms (lines 1051-1120)
• Post-Pubescent Homeland Insecurity (lines 1121-1218)
• Trickle-down Reaanomics (lines 1219-1232)
• Limbo Expectations (lines 1233-1260)
• Second-Rate Rose (lines 1261-1274)
• Animal Firm (lines 1275-1288)
• Co-opted by the Conspiracy (lines 1289-1358)
• Custom-Tailored Tragedy (lines 1369-1372)
• Living Mystery (lines 1373-1456)
• Gambler's Fallacy (lines 1457-1498)
• Future Anterior Retrospection (lines 1499-1526)
• The Great Success Gets Even Longer (lines 1527-1540)
• Innocent Bystanders (lines 1541-1569)
• The Worst and the Dullest (lines 1569-1596)
• A Useless Ewe (lines 1597-1638)
• Conservative Liberal Hawkish Humanitariansm (lines 1639-1666)
• The Words Don't Do It (lines 1667-1708)
• Chateau D'If Guantanamo (lines 1709-1750)
• Margin of Error (lines 1751-1820)
• A War on Very Bad (lines 1821-1890)
• Turd Blossom Rasputin (lines 1891-1946)
• Stay the Curse (lines 1947-2044)
• When Scapegoats Look on the Bright Side of Life (lines 2045-2072)
• A Burning Bush Barks (lines 2073-2086)
• Dumb Peyote (lines 20873-2184)
• Consistent Hobgoblins (lines 2185-2268)
• A Profligate Parable (lines 2269-2352)
• Moby Dork (lines 2353-2506)
• The Telltale Heartless (lines 2507-2576)
• The Triumph of Strife (lines 2577-2604)
• No Exit (lines 2605-2660)
• The Answer Off the Table (lines 2661-2688)
• Peacock Pugilism (lines 2688-2701)
• Deja-vu, Redux (lines 2702-2743)

In the style of Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter":

• Metaphorically Amorous Militarist Animism (2021)
• Humpty Dumpty Omelets (2005)
• The Hens Roared Upside Down (2005)
• Rasputin and the Retard (2006)
• Flailing Flounders Fail Again (2006)
• A Disowned Heir Transparent (2007)
• Polling the One-Legged Proles (2007)
• Up Your's John McCain (2007)
• Peace With Horror (2008)
• It Takes a Pillage (2010)
• A War upon the Occupied (2012)

"Fernando Po, U.S.A., America's post-literate retreat to Plato's Cave":

• Introduction to Fernando Po, USA


• The Boobies of Fernando Po (2005)
• Boobie Political Science (2005)
• Boobie Genital Mutilation and Ritual Cannibalism (2005-2021)
• Boobie Official Mendacity (2005)
• The Boobie Pledge of Subservience (2005)
• Boobie Precursor Chemicals (2005)
• Boobie Contract Mercenaries (2005)
• Boobie Deadbeats (2005)
• Boobie Meretricious Mongoloids (2005)
• Boobie Unconscious Projection (2005)
• Boobie Reactionary Religious Recrudescence (2005)
• Boobie Constitutional Concupiscence (2005)
• Boobie Jurisprudence (2005-2010)
• Boobie Lords of the Flies 2006)
• Boobie International Relations (2006)
• Boobie Animist Farm 2006)
• Boobie Access Punditry (2006)
• Boobie Bozo Bellicosity (2006)
• Boobie Transferred Nationalists (2006)
• A Boobie Murphy's Flaw (2006)
• Boobie Listening Tours (2006)
• Boobie Top-Down Class Warfare (2006)
• Boobie Last Chance Scenarios (2006)
• Boobie Anti-Intellectualism (2006)
• Boobie Comparative Misanthropology (2006)
• Boobie Clowns and Circuses (2006)
• Boobie Conference Calls (2006)
• Boobie Culture Shock (2006)
• Boobie Exit Strategies (2006)
• Boobie Humanitarian Intervention (2006)
• Boobie Pathological Partners (2006)
• Boobie Qualifications for Higher Office (2006)
• Boobie Recipe for Risk Aversion (2006)
• Boobie Short Order Prime Ministers (2006)
• Boobie Sneak Public Relations (2006)
• Boobie Stud Buzzard Quail Hunt (2006)
• Boobie Stud Hamsters (2006)
• Boobie Susceptibility to Word Magic (2006)
• Boobie Theory of the Seizure Class (2006)
• Boobie Infotainment (2006-2009)
• Boobie Theology (2006-2017)
• Boobie Necrophiliacs 2006-2018)
• Boobie Counter Insurgency (2006-2020)
• Boobie Preternatural Semi-Eroticism (2007)
• Boobie Blank Rubber Checks (2007)
• Boobie Mirror on the Stall (2007)
• Boobie Vindication by the Venal (2007)
• Boobie Exit Interviews (2008)
• Boobie Stopped Clocks (2008)
• Boobie Self-Constructed Conundrums (2009)
• Boobie Pandemics (2020)
• Boobie Sub-Cognitive Symbolic Stimulus-Response (2020)
• Boobie Tiresome "Terror" Tropes (2020)

Elegy:

• A Song for Stuart (2024)
• Of Cabbages and Kings (2018)
• Requiem for Molly (2007)
• Sayonara, Caballero (2009)

Rhymed Free Verse ("anti-verse"):

• A Historic Presidency (2012)
• An Orangutan in the Oval Office (2018)
• Confirmation Hearing at the Zoo (2019)
• Late for the Insider Auction (2020)
• TINA - "There is no alternative" (2021)
• Whisper in a Wind Tunnel (2022)
• Imperial Cupidity and its Consequences (2022)
• Adapters and Converters (2023)
• A Removeable Feast (2023)
• Underhanded Understudies (2023)

Modified Spenserian Sonnet:

• The Mortal-laughing Spleen (2014)

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2005-2021