"Kurt's cipher machine in the decoding room!"
Photograph ©Copyright 2007 by John-Ward Leighton
AND SO IT GOES
Kurt Vonnegut died today
at eighty four
and greedy me still wanted more.
In search of easy rhymes
I read his obit in the
New York Times.
My hand lingered over his books
on my shelf
and remembered when I had read them
myself.
In "Breakfast of Champions"
he wrote
and I silently light one
in quote.
That beings, from another world and time,
could put their farts in text and rhyme
if only we could decode the flatulence
and put the words into a sentence
that
sent me snickering from the room
for someone with whom
to share the laugh.
Could there be a more fitting epitaph?
Kurt always knew when the emperor
had no clothes
and often said of official lunacy
obvious to all who could listen, reason and see,
we had learn to hold our nose
while decoding their farts,
"And
so it goes."