Poe To The People

Once Upon a Century Dreary

May 17, 2018

Every now and again we at Paying Attention take leave of our senses…I mean take leave of the perpetually nauseating, cruelly relentless and painfully frightening events of the moment to look back in anger and/or look forward in terror.  Today’s offering is a modest foray into literary ramblings, looking to a wordsmith of yore to help survive the current Kafkaesque onslaught, hopefully avoiding any actionable plagiarism. 

Who better to capture the mood of America in the Year of Our Lord Clearly Giving Up and Leaving, than the author of the appalling, the penman of the perverse, the executor of the eerie, the master of the macabre – Edgar Allan Poe.  Today, America is enveloped in an Orange Gas Cloud.  The pall of Chrump permeates the land, the air, the sea and Twitter.  The pain and stench are unavoidable. We could use a man like Poe to translate today’s unmitigated angst into digestible prose.

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe had his finger on the pained pulse of personal psychology, and though he lived so long ago, his literary works might well have been penned in our time. Since they were not, the literary plagiarists here at Paying Attention have once again appropriated classic writings for a new era, with only slight modification. Poe seemed to capture our current mood with eerie exactitude, though he wrote almost 200 years ago. Actually, his dark and bruising tales seem almost quaint compared to the reality we inhabit. We are living through one of the scariest stories ever conceived. Poe could not have known that his country would one day be under the tasteless boot of a manic brute who would make Poe’s darkest tales seem like something out of Dr. Seuss.

We give you now, whether you want it or not, excerpts of Edgar Allan Poe in the time of Chrump…

The Fall of The Louse of Chrumper

It was a dark and soundless day near the end of the year, and clouds of doom were hanging low in the heavens. All day I had been hoping that the second least popular candidate ever might prevail over the very least; and in the early evening I was forced to admit we would all be captives of the Louse of Chrumper.

Best house ever.

 

I do not know how it was — but, with my first sight of the newly elected, even before that excruciating November night, a sense of heavy sadness filled my spirit. I was not alone. Across the land, many anxiously held their breath. Blinked away heavy tears. Coughed up their meals. I looked at the scene before me — at the Louse himself — at the deplorables around him — at the outlandishly wrought and colored mass atop his vacuous head — at his empty yet somehow mocking eyes — and at a few dead trees, dead from the sight of him. I looked at this scene, I say, with a complete sadness of soul which was no healthy, earthly feeling. There was a coldness, a sickening of the heart, in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt. What was it, I asked myself, what was it that was so fearful, so frightening in my view of the Louse of Chrumper? This was a question to which I could find no answer.  

The Craven

Once upon a country dreary, while I watched him, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of idiotic tweets—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one oddly crapping, tweeting near the courtroom door.

“’Tis some idiot,” I muttered, “tweeting by the courtroom door—

            Only Chrump and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak November;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—some impeachment then to borrow

An end to all our Chrumpish sorrow—sorrow he does on us dump—

For the sick and freakish tyrant whom the Devil named The Chrump—

            Nameless here for evermore.

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost before me—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Stormy—

Then was there that constant rapping—

Rapping on the courtroom door—

               Nameless here for evermore.

Quoth the craven…

            “Only this and nothing more.”   Tweeteth Chrump, “Not my fault.”

            “Only this and nothing more.”   Tweeteth Chrump, “Build the wall.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon us all.

    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the porn star she—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Stormy—

            Nameless here for evermore.

In deference to you, the loyal, sensitive and no doubt weary reader, we will leave you for now, to process, ponder and pass along what you have just witnessed.  And for good or ill, allow you at least a brief respite in anticipation of part two of our prosaic Poe parodies, which you will be able to enjoy or ignore in the coming days.

Ed Venture
Managing Editor, Paying Attention