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Saturday, March 24, 2018

"They who have shell-likes..." Instruments of Torture or the Medieval Handbook of Penance (A Nonsense ABC)


Let they who have shell-likes to hear, hark 'n' heed!
All you would-be Chaucerian pardoners need 
is my metrical handbook of penance to read.
Let all sins of the fathers descend to their seed!

Who cops to commissions of copy-cat crimes
shall be shut up in cupboards with five angel chimes.
Who sins with a widow not yet under vows
shall ride herd on bass bumbasses sounded by sows.

Who investigates entrails of sturgeon or gar
shall be tethered to cocktail drums, aures ajar.
Whose aim proves amiss when engaging spittoons
shall acquire, by rote, two and twelve dudelsack tunes.

Who consumes raw crustacea as cure for catarrh
shall reside deep inside an electric guitar.
Who intimidates dwarves with a porbeagle bone
shall attend a Three Flexatones concert…alone.

Who’d harmonize not to “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”
shall arrange same for glockenspiel – verse and refrain.
Who loiters at seances, irking young girls,
shall be hitched to a humming top powered by squirr’ls.

Who covets his kinswoman’s nursemaid’s third daughter
shall finger an ingungu deep under water.
Who aggravates hermits on Hallowmas Eve
shall perform on a juice harp a recitative.

Who engages in practices arch or demonic
shall secretly tape The Kazoo Philharmonic.
Who pilfers a poor box, withdrawing a dime,
shall retune seven lithophones five at a time.

Who dismembers his priest with a circular saw
shall erect seven mirlitons using no straw.
Who’s chronic’lly late with his booster club dues
shall blow on a noseflute “The Saint Louis Blues.”

Who into idolatry hazards a foray
shall glue in his earshaft an oboe d’amore. 
Whose knee-to-groin thrusts makes of basses sopranos
shall sleep three score weeks beneath player pianos.

Who postpones his toilette until late afternoon
shall be strapped, par hazard, to a Turkish qanun. 
Who rustles his grand-nephew’s prize-winning cattle
shall chant twelve Te Deums astraddle The Rattle.

Who perjures himself in a courtroom of law
shall play medleys from Cats on a musical saw.
Who behaves as a scoundrel (no ‘if’s, ‘but’s or ‘and’s)
shall be forced to play Theramin using no hands.

Who Q-tips his ears more than once or twice daily
shall render Trane’s “Giant Steps” on ukulele.
Who dabbles in pyramid schemes or payola
shall bypass my giant Amati viola.

Who scandalous rumors refuse to quash
shall master the washboard while doing the wash.
Who yields to temptations to unlicensed sex
shall be bound to a xylophone set up by Czechs.

Who enters a cloister with ill-fitting togs
shall audition yueh ch’ins pick’d, pluck’d…pounded! – by dogs.
Who expresses obscenities starting with ‘f’
shall accommodate trough zithers till he goes deaf.

This handbook of penance has come to an end.
What remains? That its strictures be roundly “Amen!”d.

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