In Which I Consider The Twilight Of The Tweets, But Not With Great Seriousness

It's no surprise that I'm an opera fan,
Not since Tee Morris flushed me out last week,
And we all know I Tweet all that I can,
But even so, this news fair made me freak!
A Twitter opera, its pun-ful name
Of Twitterdammerung, seemed like a joke --
But that is not the punchline. Oh, for shame!
A friend's rhetoric excess made me choke
With laughter and I shared it with my tweeps:
That Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber had a plan
To make a Twitter musical. This keeps
On circulating now as news. Oh man!
My real regret is that 'twas not my fate,
Though, to compare crowd-source with Nahum Tate!

In Which I Muse On A World In Which Henry Purcell Is God

Baroque, complex and lovely: so would be
A world where Henry Purcell was its God.
'Twould matter not if actually He
Existed or not. If real the facade
He'd place on His creation would hold fast
To fine ideals we'd strive to emulate.
If just a figment, still his unsurpassed
Oeuvre we'd dreamed up sure would mitigate
The flaws we have as creatures. And the spheres
Would elegantly vibrate -- this although
Our understanding snagged up on the gears
Of Nahum Tate's plumb awful libretto.
An artist who can transcend stuff like that
Could knock Jehovah into a cocked hat!

BONUS BONUS SONNET: Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Meus Equus Parvus

Miss Ribken, O my wise and gentle friend,

Who was so kind this morning as to share,

This madness, Horsey Planet, to no end

But generosity! T'was most unfair

Of me to repay such as such I did.

My tweeting fingers sometimes, on their own

Share naughtiness from deep within my id,

Which id loves now and then to hear a groan

Of anguish at a pun or inside joke.

I hope Brent Weichsel's mash-up was a cure

For earworm torment. I know I provoke

A further dose of wrath, in fact I'm sure,

By naming here the song for readers: it's

"My Little Pony." May it cause no fits.