(Throwback Thursday) Just Raven About Vonnegut

Welcome to my spook-easy!

I guess the approach of Halloween has put me in a spooky mood, so I’m reprinting this one from October, 2023.

Look at it this way. You will never - I promise - see a more outrageous rhyme than one in the third verse here, so it’s worth reading, just for that!

Once upon a midnight windy, in my home in Northside Indy
Reading quaint and curious volumes of forgotten prose
Suddenly there came a pecking, on our freshly painted decking
As of someone gently checking, checking where this doorway goes
“Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “pecking with a pointy nose”
Only this, so I supposed

It was in the bleak October, I was not completely sober
I was reading works by Kurt, a lot of those
I had stumbled from Broad Ripple, where I’d gone to have a tipple,
Dry Martini, double, triple, triple, yes, just one of those
Near home, a flashing neon sign beseeched me, “Eat at Joe’s”
In the bitter, bracing, wind, my fingers froze

At SeaWorld, in the Otter House, I’d started reading Slaughterhouse
My affection for his writing only grows
Fell in love with “Mother Night,” but didn’t understand it, quite
Re-read it just the other night and now, who knows?
This writer doesn’t wrap his tales in Christmas bows,
But never are his novels too verbose

Open here I flung the curtain, there I saw it, knew for certain
Herein flew a stately raven, striking a defiant pose,
Startled, I beheld the raven, features etched and sharply graven
Seeking here secure haven far away from all his woes
Saw my bookshelves, on reflection, he approved of my collection, all in rows,
Quoth the raven, ”So it goes…”

So now, the two of us amigos – I always go wherever he goes -
Spend happy nights and days in Vonnegutian throes
The two of us will each take out, our very favorite Kilgore Trout
And spitball what he’s all about, when reading those
“He’s selling cheap storm windows in Cohoes?”
Quoth the raven, ”So it goes…”

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