Vigilink

Suicide for the Lethally Fashionable



Leave ‘em mourning merrily
A Thousand Wurds in 106 Lines of Doggerel Poesy

Written By 

Tommy George



The A-B-C's of a Much Cooler Detroit

by Tommy George
2019-01-01

See the grinning wraith below. He is L. Brooks Pattersen, a former Michigan bureaucrat who declared in a national magazine that he believes fencing off Detroit, throwing in some corn and blankets, and giving the city back to the Native Americans from whom the land was first stolen is the answer to Detroit's problems. While he probably thought he was making a cutting remark, American history may bear out that his impudent prattle is the only intelligent idea the man ever expressed.
L. Brooks Pattersen

Narcissus Mortified: an Epicedium


by Viktor Quixote
10-13-2019 

Nemesis, dealer of ironic fates, killed Narcissus by drowning--
not him, but his twin sister, on whose grace long he had fed.
Death left him peerless, his mirrored reflection nowhere to be found.
Mythical fairness slept only in most handsome bed. 
Fairness so fouled complained, "What fruit compares
to that born of my mother?
What bloated prune of Poseidon be crowned in her stead?"
Diving black-water depths where dearest sister slept, Narcissus spied palest light shone from beloved face so like his own, 
fated to glow unkissed amidst eternity's cold, dateless night.
Unsealing every lip, Narcissus drank of her gloam,
and drowned for the ache, all in one take.  Some voice cried:
"That's a wrap, people!  Good work!  Now we all can go home."

I Resolve to Stop Making Resolutions

by Tommy George


Just before the start of each new year--about 11:40 PM each December 31st, filled with some spirit sufficient to resurrect my belief in the Tooth Fairy--I find myself in the ammonia-scented, empty corner of whatever riotous tavern I happen to be in, chin in one hand, stumpy pencil in the other, drawing up a list of impossible resolutions for the twelve months about to befall my besotted existence. These annual compendiums of wishful thinking are a habit hard to break, because of the items I include, I sometimes accomplish one or two, at least in part. For example, last year I resolved to start using the bathroom for nocturnal calls of nature (i.e., no more bed-wetting). I made it work for a full four months. The other occupants of our family bed--my wife, mother-in-law, and four children--stopped calling me a wretched pee-boy father figure during those pleasantly arid nights.  

Four-and-Twenty

by Tommy George

Birds of black feather may wish to attend
memorial services for fallen friends
sent to pop merrily out of a pie
chirping a tune, and then wasting their guys.
Black-ops turned tragic when agents discovered
two dozen dead birds beneath the crust smothered

O, Four and Twenty, remember them well!

Patriot wings fluttering scared as hell,
the horror of  twenty-four burning blackbirds
a-cry in the kiln, all their chirping unheard,
their mission forfeited by dying in pie,
twenty-four operatives lost to the sky.

Sing a song of justice!  Court-martial, begin!

Your lie's been discovered; you're guilty as sin.
The two-dozen birds you assigned to the op
never could sing in that misguided flop.
God knows what else that you have buried in there,
what skeletons in your Skull and Bones lair.

You skyjacked a country on leveraged wings

to prove to the world you could make the dead sing.
When smoldering corpses produced not a note,
Your Uncle Dick hid himself deep in one throat,
falsetto-piping his misinformation.
The outpouring of tears inundated a nation,
caused by the stench of your Uncle Dick's breath
Singing an ethos of lawless intent.

O! Four-and-twenty!  Look not to the sky

when black-as-hell tactics turn up in the pie.