December 31, 2010: Defused Lethal Poem Released by Government. "Safe but Still Sucks" says President

Omaha, Nebraska: December 31, 2010 The Reformed Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Mass Progressive Suicides (CIMPS) of December 2009 today released its findings on the tragedy.

CIMPS’ summary concludes:

Late last year a virulent poem created by Al Gore decimated the Progressive Movement of the United States when 98% of its membership committed suicide after reading it. Contrary to rumors of a putsch by the Conservative Revolutionary Front, it is the finding of the emergency U.S. government in Omaha that it was not LSD in the water supply of Washington, the Upper West Side, and vast portions of Hollywood, San Francisco, and 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue that precipitated the near extinction of American progressives. Neither was it a conspiracy of global oil interests headed by defrocked members of the KGB. The deaths are attributable to the deranged act of a lone poet.

“Many thought the progressive die-off of last December was the act of foreign terrorists. This was understandable in view of the devastation and elation, but wrong. On the contrary,” President-Select Sarah Palin announced today on her “That’s Mrs. President to You” Facebook page, “our investigation has discovered that all those progressives whose bodies could be identified once the Hazmat teams had secured the afflicted areas were found clutching copies of a poem by Al Gore.”

Calling it “the deadliest poem since Barney Frank’s unpublished collection of erotic haiku, Basement Boys, was ruthlessly suppressed in the 1990s,” President-Select Palin assured the public that if one had normal American sensibilities the poem had been rendered safe to read as long as “at least three hours have passed since your last meal.”

Independent Confirmation Postponed

It was hoped that the Associated Press would be able to fact-check Gore’s “verse” for residual embedded lethality, but premature exposure to the lines without protection left that organization devastated as nearly 99% of the progressively minded staff succumbed to its powers even after detoxification.

Following federal guidelines in the use of protective reading Kindle filters, your PJM-certified reporter has examined a detoxed version of the deadly verse. Following that he is able to bring you this close structural examination of its lethal elements. For your protection, the Gore opus has been fully disassembled, flayed, and fisked on a line by line basis.

Still, if you harbor any faint progressive tendencies, it’s best you “just say no” lest you decide, as many progressives did after reading it during those tragic days of last December, to “just kill myself.”

WARNING: Under no circumstances consider reassembling the deadly verse.

Al Gore’s “P.O.E.M.” With the Safety On

One thin September soon

[Here Gore strikes the bardic lute sounding his "barbaric yawp" for a greater commitment to his Rush Limbaugh crash diet, and at the same time introducing the "oon" rhyme in case "moon, June, croon, spoon" should be needed at a later moment. Forewarned, short-armed, etc.]

A floating continent disappears

[Here the poet performs his first blatant literary theft by purloining a key concept from the Welsh Poet Donovan's early LSD period masterwork, Atlantis, but wisely eschews Donovan’s dubious "Way down below the ocean" motif.]

In midnight sun

[Identifying with the Inuit (aka Eskimos), Gore evokes the image of dark on darker dark at its darkest. While it may be said that Milton's "darkness visible" beats this trope in terms of concision, Milton falls short by failing to allude to the diversity of life which Gore was known to have kept in the sub-basement of his Nashville home (The location for the "Bring out the gimp!" scene in Pulp Fiction.)]

Vapors rise as

[Picking up the pace our poet transports his reader, for one brief and pungent moment, into the most private, intimate and smallest room in his house. In such a setting the deepest odors of Mr. Gore's poetic gifts waft upward and subsume the unwary reader, inducing in him a trance like state ... ]

Fever settles on an acid sea

[ ... in which the effects of the previous night's vast consumption of various endangered species at Chez Gore are spewed forth into an ocean of Zantacs and Pepto-Bismol on the waves of a refreshing high colonic that engulfs the reader in high poetic fancy previously known only to Dante.]

Snow glides from the mountain

[Here we begin to discern the sense of infinite loss that overwhelms a billionaire bard who discovers that the Black Diamond route behind his Aspen mansion no longer holds the deep powder.]

Ice fathers floods for a season

[This is a line resplendent in its simple complexity. It could be a warning "written on the subway walls," one that says, mayhap, "cannonballs." It could be the poet reflecting on the state of his wife's flickering affections as some of Tiger Woods' schedule opens up. It could be a humble observation that prostate afflictions are not easily overcome. The uncertain richness of this strain of ambiguity stuns one into mute vacillation.]

A hard rain comes quickly

[Not content with pillaging the minor poets Donovan and Milton, Gore boldly rapes the early work of the great Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" by his deft enjambment of that poem's signature refrain with his personal erectile difficulties. An intimate if perhaps ill-considered disclosure that draws the awed reader deeper in to Gore’s shallows.]

Then dirt is parched

[This stunning image sketches like a rainbow in curved air what perhaps happens to mud when moisture is removed, presumably by too much hot air, and returns to the poem entire to a firm foundation in the natural world of Gore that is “Gaia all too Gaia.”]

Kindling is placed in the forest

[Scholars have noted this echo of "coals to Newcastle," but more practical readers have observed: "Kindling is pretty much what is found naturally on the forest floor and there's no need to bring it."]

For the lightning’s celebration

[We are approaching the bitter end of this sweet song hymn to the earth with this evocative calling up of the lightning from far heaven on the oft yearned for Walpurgisnacht of the gods. One can almost hear Odin's anvil sing out its warning. If only the progressives had heeded it, but then if Nancy Pelosi had only shared half her Botox with Hillary Clinton both may have survived exposure to the poem.]

The shepherd cries

[If you thought that shepherds were made of sterner stuff, you weren't paying attention in The Silence of the Lambs, were you?]

The hour of choosing has arrived

[Indeed it has and would that many of our dear departed progressive brethren had heeded this warning and stopped reading at this point.]

Here are your tools

[Noose, gun, high ledge at the CBS and New York Times skyscrapers, sleeping pills, cyanide Kool-Aid, self-immolation. All those tools and more were used. And each act was accompanied with the same note: "Al is right. My "hour of choosing" has arrived. I just can't go on inflicting my carbon footprint on the world any longer. I love you, Gaia. Goodbye forever."]

In terms of reducing the carbon load on the planet as well as purifying the air of American Progressive out-gassing, all can agree that this poem was not only Al Gore’s masterpiece but also his most fitting memorial.

Rumors that Gore is still hiding out in Copenhagen disguised as a blonde Danish prostitute are probably untrue, but since the poem was widely distributed to the disastrous “Copenhagen Conference” the bodies are still too thick around the periphery of that city to permit entry. President-Select Palin has promised “a full and complete search of the rubble for the remains of Gore as soon as it is deemed safe for our troops.”

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First published at Pajamas Media: Pajamas Media on December 9, 2009 Posted by Vanderleun at December 13, 2009 1:04 AM