Every once in a while I remember something I wrote a long time ago as I’m trying to craft something new. I often wish that I could go back and grab that old thing to help me craft the new thing. The delightful bit is that the internet plus a bit of google fu makes it possible to grab that old thing without remembering the whole. Just remember a few key words and go searching.

Well, this morning that happened, and when I went back to grab the old thing, I accidentally found something else, something I doubt it would have occurred to me ever to look for, but being in the thread & searching for my ‘nym, I was intrigued to find a poem. I don’t write many poems anymore. So I gave it a read, and found it held up remarkably well.

The context was Richard Dawkins’ twitter musings about how some rapes aren’t as bad as other rapes, and that he had a logical taxonomic system for ranking their badness, which was sure to help the world which had, prior to Dawkins, never realized that different victims’ reactions to rape could be different. It was the kind of staggering arrogance common to teenagers and Dawkins.

While the incident itself is unlikely ever to come up again, I find the beat poem I composed about it worth preserving, and put it here primarily to make it easier for me to find later, should I ever have a need similar to the one that came up this morning. But if either of you readers also find amusement or pleasure in its composition, I shall consider that an ancillary benefit.

“Look, hey, no. I’m a good guy!
Why are you all so unreasonable?”
he screams into London’s morning fog of pixels.
“You’ve twisted my words. Don’t lie.
All of us, selfish as genes, are able
to join, aren’t we? Aren’t we more than dick cells
Fit for cutting away? I
start, ‘date rape is bad, but….’ Feminists rebel.
And even my ‘splaining, ‘It’s only cause sex sells,’
falls on their ears like spit in my eye.”