Finding chocolate by echolocation
a pipistrelle would call mere trompe-l'oreille.
'I always knew Roman spelt trouble'
remarks Ahab in rehab while proving
that his prophecies for 1999 were really
only grasping the wrong end of a compositor's stick.
'Why the always wanting to finish any writing
and so end the pleasure?' Why 'always'? 
Why 'any'? It takes so much distemper 
to measure the ado. Query
whether goblin or globin where the quarry
is genetic or a twelve-mile tailback on a major route
across the wordland, a zodiac to you
if not zebra misbehaving in the misbegot gazebo.
'Change of mind could be costly for Halsey.'
'Presence' with the usual erratum in this
case gone missing but to an X-ray I
presumed however reprehensible apparent
and loosely translated 'Presentation'.
 
 
 

Ars Poetica:
Empsonics including a remark by George Saintsbury

I can't remember who predicted the fancy damage.
Seeing where a noise is coming from
helps. It helps the 'cry' in lyric when it is well managed.

Epic isn't for you if you don't like carnage.
An English fountain won't play after 5pm
even though you've bought your ticket. Fancy damage

to a country house and call it Carthage:
a fountain though a pen when a swan but the museum
turns musician as the night wears on. Carnage

is a joy in an epic and the fanciest damage.
Seeing noises will show you where an owl is coming from.
It helps the 'cry' in lyric when it is well managed.
 
 
 

A Looking-Glass for Logoclasts: Life Studies

Cumber of immediate impressions left to steep for the 100th time.
I view myself from the outside observing his lowered and gathered a habit.
A jabbered of everything the spider knows to the dead letter office.
B sat qualmish in the porphyry chair with a halo of ghosts to write or drub.
C had enough woods of withered pines more exquisite than anything by Horace.
Nephritic pains and blue-devil verses were his household gods.
Dearest D who knew the want of a want spelt a thousand words wrong.
Not many more Sundays shut an absinthe mistake in his golden cage. 
E so fond of his friends doomed to a suburb in the Pindaric style.
My dear Cozwoz dearest Princess my dear Mary so attached to Ovid. 
Dear Rock of Names where the thunder sleeps.
When F and G arrive at the summum bonum they'll be boys again. 
H had such a fancy as retreat disembrangled.
J's was the barber's talent who talked as he wrote like a perfect gallows. 
His jobation unhinged K and L.
My late dead dear sparrow you may expect it to snow stars. 
M made a bread-and-cheesish profit from garlic comedies. 
What was Hecuba to him but a mess of the poets? 
You're not in Arcadia, N told him, when you're in the Post Office reading my letters. 
O saw Elyzium transplanted in a pocket glass shaken to atoms.
If ever he was mumped he was doubly nettled.
The world dead around him but himself circumspangled. 
P's volcanic dialect was easily confused with Babylonish jargon. 
When the frolic had gone off Q could never forgive England.
First it's bogberry and apricots then purging and subliming.
Dear Machiavel.
R told S what T would do tomorrow.
U was Molly Mog's puppet at his time of transmigration.
V went to Italy with money and left W farewelling.
As if the setting sun could be caught unannoyed my dear heart.
The ruinated renovated.
Three words and a half smile sometimes recall the most pastoral of authors.
At the cataclysm X will be sunk in Spinoza in a cabman's shelter.
Where there's a parcel of singers there's a cargo of songs.
Y didn't seem luciferous to Z but meteorous.