In the Northwest called Pacific
In a town near Moscow Mountain
Was a church that riled the natives,
A tribe they called Intolerista.
This tribe attacked with shrill invective,
With keening and progressive yodling,
Along with fruit and some dead-catting.
Now in God’s kindly providences,
Displaying all His sovereign mercies,
The names of all these adversaries
Were metrical and most trochaic.
There was Rose Huskey, Joseph Hansen,
And with his papers, Charlie Nolan,
Not to mention Dustin Bauer,
Then, with his issues, Terry Morin,
Who thought that he should get his oar in
To keep his rowboat going in circles.
This was beyond coincidence
And brought an open invitation.
Who can resist the Muse descending?
I usually can’t, at least, depending.
They filed complaints, and in complaining,
They claimed a lofty altruism
That did not smell like a vendetta,
As something dead behind their fridge.
Their only thought was for law-keeping,
They longed for what they said was Justice,
As now obtained through clunky readings.
No matter, friend, how thin you slice it
The loaf you cut is still baloney.
They wanted tax exemption hearings,
They strangled gnats in zoning strife,
They planted stories in the papers,
Declining to obtain a life.
They wrote, they wailed, they signed petitions,
They filled the air with petty wrangles.
They said that this was noble, lofty,
They thought that what they did was normal.
So mark this word, and keep remembering
That all their strange grotesqueries
By them will not be called pathetic.
What will they say is cold injustice?
What will they mark as past the limit?
Just that one man saw their follies
In a measured, cadenced way,
Only that he saw their sliming
Worth some pleasant, casual rhyming.
Jube Tarbox