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cover art by Tomm Scalera Exhortation - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 20 - Urania: Take a ticket. By Zeus!—number 2,900,001! We started out 3, then swelled to 9; you poets have no one to blame but yourselves for this long line. It's not like we can fabricate more wisdom or beauty at will just to meet an increasing demand. Such things take time. You understand. Old-timers made liberal use of hemlock to ensure their access to us, four or five times a month. But don't fear. Unless you wilt from the sun or collapse from dehydration, I'll see to it you get your audience: the quickest, faintest whisper in one ear that only someone starved for something never heard before will hear. Pitch – Muse's Advisory, Sept. 21 – Thalia: Once you make it to the head of the line our personalized service guarantees your inspiration is a perfect fit, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Langston Hughes's number came up late one night during his busboy shift at the Wardman Park. I double-dared him, Lay your 'Weary Blues' down by the tea-cup of that grim Illinoisan with the swell cowlick. Halfway through his pastry and the poem a plug of prune got stuck in Vachel Lindsay's throat, his wife dug out his gullet with her index finger and the first words to come popping from of his mouth: My God, who wrote that? Bukowski was a tough nut. When I first lit on his TV set, he leapt and lunged at me with a rusty fly-swatter! Even a would-be angle he brushed back, until I whispered in his ear: Rent. Food. Miller High Life. Pall Malls. White Owls. Child support. $100 a month! He gave me props in 'Betting on the Muse': this is why I chose to be a writer. if you're worth just half-a-damn you can keep your hustle going until the last minute. He thought me gold. We midwife every plump new poem that bawls or coos its way to print. Become a Byron on your own? No. You'll learn soon enough we are the best and only game in town. The Sincerest Form - Muse's Advisory, Sept 22 – Clio: You who pander to posterity as successfully as Nathan Hale inspire me: though green behind the ears when facing Extreme Unction at the New York city gallows felt no inkling of compunction about plagiarizing Cato he'd just read at Yale: "What a pity it is That we can die but once to serve our country"; or Abraham Lincoln several generations later borrowing a page from George III's old playbook magnanimously made decree that every slave held by rebellious foes— and only those— “shall be thenceforward and forever free”; or Jesus cribbing the less two-faced Jeremiah's "Turn the other cheek." Pull out the stops! Beg, borrow, steal with all the cheek that you can muster— gloss your own lips with the luster of dead losers who turned lovely phrases but no profits of éclat. What goes around comes around. Nothing's new under the sun. The sincerest form of flattery is looking out for number one. Cherchez la Muse - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 23 Clio: Big mouth and hyperbolic pen both preconditions for renown, but though you loudly toot your horn, you'll want one sidelong bag of wind to fan you both while you live, and subsequent. Take admirable John Paul, Scots murderer and slaver, who embarked to Roanoke, threw in with rebels also hunted by the Crown, pirated a cargo of woolen coats off Labrador, inked his first heroic boast— The news of the captured uniforms renewed the courage of George Washington's army and contributed significantly to his success at the Battle of Trenton against the Hessians— and appended the alias 'Jones.' Angered by his arrogance the admirals whisked him off to France where he no sooner disembarked, but won the war again— After General Burgoyne's army surrendered at Saratoga, it was I who carried word to Paris, whose King embraced our cause with a treaty of alliance! Returning to the brine, I found myself so near a Scotch coasting schooner laden with barley that I could not avoid sinking her, though I was flying no external appearance of war— he came ashore at Whitehaven for wine and inflated a moment of drunken arson— Had we arrived with a different aim, not one ship of more than two hundred anchored there would have escaped and the whole world would not have saved the town from flames— into a highflying balloon of fantasy. But strategy, not boasts, fan his fame. Cannon-battered, the white flag of Bonhomme Richard flown, he turned on the English who'd ferried his men aboard— I demand you surrender to us!— soon revised to I may sink but be damned if I strike!— about halfway to the gallant cry Teddy Roosevelt would later cite— I have not yet begun to fight!— long after he died in ignomy face down at No. 42 Rue de Tournon and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery for Alien Protestants. But that was but a bump in the road. In 1905 an unidentified coffin was dug up to serve in Roosevelt's campaign for U.S. Navy appropriations, shipped in a bronze sarcophagus to the Academy at Annapolis where the dead Scot's reputation was finally gilded with oration To our ancient ally, the great French nation, to whom we owe it that this great patriot won for the Stars and Stripes the victory that gives him deathless glory; to whose courtesy we owe this hero's body; his own intestines churned as immortality was earned. Though he should have been hung, the name of John Paul Jones now sweetens every school-kid's tongue in every corner of your stupid land. And they can say who Homer is, but never read a line. You'll want one sidelong bag of wind to fan you while you live, and subsequent— Euterpe: That might be me. As much stems from your vintner's stature, backer's pockets, vendor's savvy, as your vine. Forget landscapes, zephyrs, grapes. More prize your angel, John Paul Byron, than your wine. Caveat - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 24 - Calliope: If you really had something earth-shaking to say, would you put it in a poem? Einstein dipped into Baudelaire but saw that Imagism didn't suit e equals m c squared. Kennedy thought the Cuban Missile Crisis might fit nicely in haiku but Jackie just said Jack, and he knew. Are you okay? I haven't discouraged you? Okay, move up in line. Patience is liberty's grease. You're now 2,868,232. From way up at the front, Homer looks back blind, the thing he's proud of most not Iliad or Odyssey, but having kept his hair. Festa di Compleanno - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 25 Clio: De Felice wrote, "I don't report on History. I stick a carving fork in it and see what I can get it to confess. The juice is several inches in. The facts are but the skin." Polimnia: Silvana, Delia, Maya—Zucchero— stop squabbling over the flowers! All four of you are acting like bambini! You cut it out right now or I will throw the tutta torta maledetta straight into the trash! You will all get slices with a rose on it! Clio: Push the tines in as far as they go, yank them out smooth and quick, apply your lips, and suck! Don't worry about what comes out. Polimnia: And what good does History do? Mussolini pledged that the line for ice cream would move faster, but your tutti-frutti great men aren't worth the milk they're made from. Clio: Sister, speaking of not growing up, when are you dropping this Italian thing? Are you ashamed of your Bœotian roots, cling to a fantasy that long-lost Pop is actually Marcello Mastroianni? Polimnia: You're a cynic. What's wrong with fantasticheria? Put on your birthday-party hat! Why rub your nose in merda when imagination's mirror offers faces that are fairer? Orientation - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 26 - Melpomene: I bear another "omen," one nightmare of my own— a sadistic dentist, what else?— and one of my sister Euterpe's. He liked the piccolo, she moans, but turned up his nose at the lyrics. We take a risk in this line of work of ending up like poor poets themselves tragically chasing praise. I stroke her hair and coo, The genre's changed. Since Jethro Tull grew gray, combining flute with singing is hopelessly passé. You see that colossal heap of myrtle and laurel branches, snippets implanted in a million poets' ears who failed to summon stanzas and eventually gave up? We used to burn them in bonfires but the smoke of dactyls stirred great Zeus's allergies, and clouds rained dousing tears. Now nymphs weave baskets from the new lines at the top, fill them with humus from the base, and then haul it to the Thespiae haymarket to sell it for compost. You see? As the Pythia foretold, The road down from the muse's plinth is sparkling with gold. Zsa Zsa's Sentence - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 27 - Terpsichore: The dyke prosecutor mocked her for craving attention. Zsa Zsa huffed from the courtroom in tears. Yes, she had punched out the Beverly Hills cop who pulled her Rolls over—tags expired, no license, open bottle of Kecskemeti vodka.