44 Here Comes Coy to Save the Motherland

[alice wellintown]

>
> de gustibus, or non-, one might dispute
> of correspondents cute or not so cute
> like Slothrop with a beard like Hemingway's;
> of the wealth of the preterite sent into frays
> by Them who've lost their souls pursuing gain
> so ill-defined as to include others' pain;
> the mindless pleasures thinking souls spurn
> as pursuits of those who never learn
> may turn out to be in the final analysis
> - if 'twere ever performed - communion chalices
> replete with saving fluid and running o'er;
> the humble chores and fool's quests
> the tale's details that may seem to bore
> mayhap include the finest of the jests...


But at my pub I always hear better jokes than I read here
And at my back I always fear time's winged charriot hurrying near
And in my shop are timbers clear that pay my wages and buy me beer
And poets at the pub, tis queer but true, make better rhymes than me or you.

Who would of the craftiest poets in English know
And how they carve their sonnets ictus and breve
Let him rub his eyes along the polished florid flow
of beveled couplets, and quatrains give
a good glossing, till he scan every line
and know their metrics foot by foot by foot
and how the poet, he has knurled his rhyme
and where and when the craftsman, his turn has put.
so that he may learn to appreciate
how rough hewn trees are joined and planed and squared,
then measured, cut, and made a fitting shape,
then sanded smooth, then sealed, and then lacquered
and waxed and polished before a reader on it
rubs his eyes, and reads it as a sonnet

                                 ~Jack the Joiner

When I consider how my bread is spent,
Near half my dough on stout and ale and beer,
While that one debt that like death, must be paid,
is owed, though my accountant bend my ear:
“The taxman needs his taxes every year.”
I quaff, and wonder why he must demand dead presidents, drinks deny.
But potent potables prevent such musings.
Now in deepest reverie, a vision
of bottles and pints of beer, floods my mind,
then when I think to send some bread to my
Uncle Sam, I belly-up to the bar,
and take Thoreau’s imprisoned stand”
“Governments govern best that govern least.”
Let men spend their wages on water, hops, barley, and yeast.

                              ~Macanarchist the Woodsman

And Malt does more than