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Childe Harold's Further Pilgrimage

by Chris "Childe Harold" Oakley

O Thou! Celestial nursemaid in the sky!
Maid of poesy of Parnassian heights
Whose soft cheeks and naughty, suggestive sighs
Delight the wordsmith’s wanton, sultry nights;
O Maid! Let not bad vibes or ladder’d tights
Constrain the flow, not staunch the queasy quill
Nor deny the palsied pen its rights.
For thy magic is strong; thou canst us thrill
Canst shock, delight, amuse, and likely make us ill.

Of Childe Harold’s American trip, sing!
Tell of the wicked witches of the West
Where in the smog, beyond imagining
There are chicks who would Byron’s studhood test!
Sing of Texas hills, with bush and longhorn blessed
Where but designer labels on their shorts
Mark out the oil-rich gentry from the rest.
Where in the air dwell Thor and his cohorts
Who oft fill the humid heat with their electric sports.

Sing also, O Muse, of the endless day
That follows the jet o’er the ice-clad shore;
Where the beauteous maids of T.W.A.
(I think they once were, twenty years afore)
Bring sup and flagon in abundance galore
Till ice yields to green; green to desert brown
And the pilot’s drawl ’bove the engine’s roar
Explains: ‘’Tis not now far to Tinsel Town.
Fasten your belts and get those Gin Slings down.’

O fair one, who doth strum the tuneful lyre
And tuneful tell the mighty deeds of man;
Curb not my fancy, quell not the wild fire
Of delight, the love affair which began
When I first understood Disney’s great plan:
That through a matey mouse and duck divine,
He strife and mis’ry from the world would ban.
And if thou deem’st it moronic, the fault is mine:
For if thou tak’st Acid before, ’twill seem just fine!

Later, while quaffing down a Miller Lite,
Echoing ’cross concourse, the Childe did hear,
A cackling that would Hecate affright!
’Twas girlies, Steve’s harem of yesteryear,
Come back to haunt, hunt and nibble his ear.
Steve threw back his head and with thumbs in belt
He quoth, ‘I know ye sense the stud horse near.
For your juices flow and your hearts do melt:
No chick has before a hornier sex god knelt! ’

The childe was deafen’d by unmaidly screams:
They would have torn off Steve’s pants then and there
Had they not had special reinforced seams;
Such rude suggestions, lewd beyond compare,
As would make Jezebel blush, fill’d the air.
‘Four is company, five more like a crowd,’
Thought the Childe, feeling like an organ spare,
‘These furrows will by Steve alone be ploughed.’
And left he them then to their sex-games fast and loud.

’Twas a burned-out shell, a husk of Steve,
Who did three days hence the aeroplane take.
Sore bedraggled, down the aisle he did weave
Clutching his privates that did madly ache.
‘Ah me,’ he quoth, ‘in th’end I had to fake,’
He told the Childe, ‘the wild pace up to keep:
Their willy desire e’en I could not slake! ’
So saying, he collapsed into deep sleep,
Dreaming of whips, leather thigh-boots, and captive sheep.

Fleeing lusty chicks they went east and north
'Pon magic wings of a 737 led
To visit the land from whence Steve sprang forth,
And musically to charm his friends to be wed.
Quoth he, ‘Here keep bad thoughts from thy head,
For hereat worshipp’d am I as a god!
A holy rev’rence would I have instead
From thyself, thou cynical English sod!
For no son of Rockton e’er earned such a wad!

‘So if thou wilt behave, I’ll drive thee round
For a pilgrimage, Childe Harold, to make,
Of that which our sons will clepe holy ground
’Pon which this child of Rockton did awake.
At the school on right, I learning did take:
’Pon no student was ever fix’d more hope—
In math or greats, I ne’er made a mistake:
I sped through my books, and ’pon yonder slope
I first the supple body of Janet did grope!

He smirk’d at the mem’ry, seeming well pleased.
I protested at once, in fulsome tones,
‘I will hear no more of thy tales of sleaze!’
Steve nodded and quoth, ‘Aye, sleaze I have known,
For the girl at Rockton Inn stood alone
In Byronic ways, where I durst not go,
And tho’ oft her tales did give me the bone,
Fearful of disease, I did not follow
As to Harvard a squeaky-clean self wish’d to show!’

The muse directs me to prattle not on
But bring this ramblesome prose to a close;
In a short while are our Byronists gone,
Jetting east, high above the icy floes;
The travel-trimm’d night permits a brief doze
’Fore they get red-eyed to London next day.
To Parnassus the celestial maid goes,
Thinking how better would have been this lay
If she’d brought her divine assistance into play.

[Commentary]