Muse Musings
The Nine Muses
of Mount Helicon
i. My Merry Muse
My over-sober water jug must go.
A buzzy flute of fizz will take its place –
I’m told rhapsodic rhyme will only flow
When fair Calliope is off her face.
I’m on a tipsy trip through daffodils.
I’m jocund as a jester on the gin
Who juggles urns and smuggles nightingales
To bardic heights of hyperbolic spin.
The ghost of Dylan totters through the mist,
A splash of frisky sloshing from his grail.
His milk-wood mojo leaves my vellum kissed
With inky glory eager to set sail
On seas of balladry to sing then soar
Beyond the hail of hiccups from the shore.
ii. My Moon Mouse Muse
My Muse is a sonorous moon mouse.
She’s canny and quirky and twee.
She ousted a grouse and a loon-louse
To croon in my brain box with glee.
She nudges and nuzzles and nibbles
My shoddiest rhymes into shape
With fervour she filched from two Sibyls,
An imp, and a chimp in a cape.
She burrows through bluster to beauty.
She blesses papyrus with odes.
Her paws are oft sore – it’s her duty
To hurtle down less-travelled roads.
She snags sassy similes soaring
Sky-high with a lyrical lilt.
All metaphors verging on boring,
She boldens and buffs to the hilt.
My pink-whiskered, purple-furred feeder
Of lexical fodder is sought
Whenever this laureate needs her
To serve up the juiciest thought.
I pray my Muse stays ever blazing
To burst with verse dappled with sun
In rapturous, page-turning
phrasing.
I pray the cat won’t get her tongue.
Susan
Jarvis Bryant
