Yesterday as I was walking home from work I found myself reciting the first fit of Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark. My mind wandered to other things and when it came back I found I was now singing to myself Gilbert’s Lying Awake. Pausing to reflect on that, I realized the two compositions had essentially the same meter, a similar rhyme scheme (with more frequent rhymes in Awake than in Snark), and each presented a pointless narrative; and I thought maybe I should try my hand at that.

Today I was reading a story about a modern soldier transported to a fantasy world shooting mythical beasts wit a rifle, which didn’t really grip me but I felt like I had to finish because I was supposed to share my thoughts on it with a friend, so I’d pause every few chapters and pen another stanza or two of the following verse. After it was done I read it through and, while it does match the meter, rhyme, and story-design I’d aimed for, it’s also darker with a lot more reference to corpses and so on than I’d originally intended.

Post-hero maid service

This place is a mess! the foreman declared,
his eyes scanning all around
at arrows and splatters and bodies as well
that littered the once-tidy ground.

Just what did they think? he asked in his rage.
“Did they think this was better off?
If they were all doctors, they’d think that behead
was treatment to cure a cough!

Just look at this here! He waved at an axe
embedded quite high in a wall.
These corpses are all tiny goblins! he said;
They’re none of them half of this tall!

The maids all just nodded; they’d heard this before.
In fact, ’twas the foreman’s main role
to rant at the mess that the heroes had made
and wheedle a larger bank roll.

The maids had all tried it, this woe is us rant,
but found themselves hampered by skill:
they’d seen it before, and they couldn’t quite feign
that blood splatters made them feel ill.

The foreman they’d hired had none of this flaw:
he’d struggle to clean a skinned knee.
His uninformed rantings were earnest enough,
they tended to increase their fee.

His ranting continued; his form was spot-on
when he pointed, dry-heaving, to gore;
’twas easily cleaned, but his ignorant retch
should increase their tip even more.

And while he was ranting at axes and blood
the maids had a huddling chat.
The left-over combat was easy to see,
but there’s more to clean up than that.

The currency problem should not be too bad,
the money-maid breathed in relief.
“They tipped three years wages in inns and in pubs,
but that shouldn’t give us much grief.

“It seems that their dragon horde is running low;
they’re generous, but lack the means
to cripple a town with a surfeit of gold
or make more retirement teens!”

At this the maids shuddered, their memory pained
by financial crises long past.
The shudder was noted, but generally blamed
on what their loud foreman said last.

Alas, it is worse with the brute emulation,
the mental-maid said with a sigh.
The children swing axes, and all play atheroes”;
they’re playing, but someone might die!”

Can comic songs fix it? the music-maid asked.
I doubt it, the mental-maid said.
Theheroes” were here, not in song but in flesh,
no song will undo what they said.”

So, widely spaced rubbish? the mucking-maid asked.
I hate it when that’s what we do.
The others all nodded; they knew it would work,
but they all disliked it some too.

And so to their business of cleaning, repairs,
and similar work they all turned,
collecting in barrels the corpses with which
the heroes had victory earned.

And when they were finished, the town all repaired,
as foreman collected their fee
they took from those barrels a lump for each bin
that they by a dwelling could see.

It didn’t take long for the entrails and gore
to rot in the bins everywhere:
the bins that the children would tend as a chore
now reeked with a post-death-like smell.

And somehow, that smell and the dismembered bits
from which it was soon found to rise
made heroing not seem as charming a thought,
and work-a-day peace seem a prize.

And that’s how the maids cleaned the streets and the minds
that heroes polluted one day.
with no one the wiser (not even the foreman);
they managed to e’en make it pay.