5

Lo! Evil built himself a tow'r
In an apartment on city pow'r
With an unlisted address,
Where the dull and the bad and the worst as you guess
Shall never see a printing press.
There plots and characters do reign
(Time-worn with dust and thick with rot!)
Resembling nothing that is sane.
Preferred by all to be forgot,
Rejection stamped across the page
The acid-bearing papers age.
No pen from the editor comes down
On the poor spelling of a noun;
But creatures from inside the wall
Stalk o'er the pages silently-
Creep o'er the boxes wide and tall-
O'er stains- o'er ink- o'er rubber bands-
O'er hope- o'er threatening demands-
O'er shadowy squares where once stuck stamps
Were steamed away to pay for lamps-
O'er many and many a disastrous line
To publish which would be a crime
The verb, the adjective, and the rhyme.
Rejection stamped across the page
The acid-bearing papers age.
So bent are the rules of grammar there
That none would ever seem to care,
While from his computer in his room
Evil thinks what to exhume.

There open scenes and gaping holes
Decry all chance of important goals;
But not the actions causing death
In each villain's final breath-
Not the heaving-bosomed maid
Tempts the reader to her aid;
For no pulses race, alas!
When questions spread like leaking gas-
No stream of conscious by an elf
Makes readers lift books from the shelf
No grocery list of murdered men
Sells volume one through six of ten.

But lo, a tread upon the stair!
A bell- there is a person there!
The whispering from the door has ceased-
The hinges creak, though freshly greased-
And when, amid unearthly screams,
Down, down the halls they skitter by
They flee the thousand shattered dreams,
Foul secrets left to die.

--Faceless Minion