Contest 4: Parodise Loosed

The Pigeon

by Luke Jackson

Source: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

Once upon a midnight snazzy,
The music always hepcat jazzy,
Over many an emptied bottle of
Pinot Noir.

I was nodding, toes a-tapping,
My fingers, metronomic snapping,
To the vulgar freestyle rapping
Of Sir Too Short.

Eagerly, I sought a shorty,
To imbibe with me a forty,
Into the bathroom we’d go snorting,
Wasted on the floor.

For that rare and radiant maiden,
Who would not run screaming out the door.

But the sad uncertain gurgling of the emptied keg,
And the sad but certain smack when I tried to touch her leg,
Kill me — with a loss of hope I’d never known before.

The students fled our dorm like cattle,
The doors and windows thundered, rattled,
An instant end to all the prattle,
And me sickened to the core.

With my nauseous innards churning,
Cigar smoke in my lungs still burning,
And still gripped by lustful yearning,
I realized I was a boor.

This mottled bird fluttered to my fence,
Gazed at me with rodent eyes as if it thought me dense,
And when it uttered these words I knew I’d parted with my sense:

“Never score.”