from the lit-critter crowd,

those who name-drop so loud

that one never quite knows what they mean

Arthur Dotland has informed me forthwith

In a tone with a top-note of pith

that the game has begun

with a promise of fun

(add gratuitous phrase here, line fifth)

For now what I can say for sure

Is that it's been such a love-er-ly tour

I have been on so far

In this charming pearl car

I'm convinced that I now want some more.

A controller of games in my lap

as I begin to explore this strange map,

Oh that Cartesian wonder

I'm drawn now to plunder

But first choose a username?! Crap.

The pleasures of choosing a name

out of nothing, and just for a game,

are outweighed by the stresses

of avoiding hot messes

When the handle one chooses is lame.

I decide post-haste what to choose:

The name only Emma would use!

It's J2CB

(in other words, me)

then three trailing numeral twos

Jay Two See Bee Two Two Two

("two hundred and twenty-two" too)

Will for now be my "name"

For the rest of this "game"

I'll remember; it's easy to do.

The trick I discovered is trite;

And yet it gets everything right

How I wish I could do

this for long passwords too

But security needs to be tight.

Now having belabored (some) point (?)

registration exists to anoint

the arriving contender,

the author-pretender,

With a veteran player adjoint.

In the time I have limmered this ick

I conclude that map is a trick.

Arthur has motivation

to choose destination

Is he simply being a dick?

The assumption I make here is 'No.'

I think where he wants me to go

is some place I don't know

and we're getting there slow

I'm certain he means me no harm;

I feel no distress nor alarm.

It's all in good fun

(at least if I've won)

It's not as if he's some Mallarme

I'm not sure what I'm to seek here

The instructions aren't coming; that's clear.

Is Arthur my 'mate'?

Or someone I'll hate?

I just hope he knows I'm not queer.

I'm questioning whether to trust

A Englishman dressed so . . . august

An alliance with me

Might just be the key.

I'll betray him to win if I must.

Yet nobody said there's a "win"

Definitions of games are quite thin

While it might be the same

as religion (that game!)

I have no real idea what's a sin.

Whenever I've gotten concerned

that without any guidance, I'm burned!

I'll never do well

I'll go straight down to Hell

I remember again what I've learned.

A sin you don't know is a sin

Will get you no time in 'the bin'

As a matter of fact-words

It's all been built backwards

No angels were found on the pin.

I, gleeful, relent to a grin.

For I now see the logic within.

So now what has this blather achieved?

Is my reader engrossed? Or aggrieved?

It's for Arthur I wait

to instantiate

His test to see if I'm naive.

I'm not. But all of this icking of limmers brings to mind a limerick that I had adapted from something unspeakably juvenile.

That's where the gems are! Like a 'fixer-upper' flat, you can get a good deal on a poem by simply stealing it, scraping off the serial number, making sure it's not bugged . . .and after a good polish, some more modest attire, a probing therapy session, and a solid embrace of the principle of mediocrity. If I were to ever do such a thing -- which I never would do because it's like, wrong to steal words that other people have already used, and you can get arrested at any time if you write down too much of a poem in your own notebook even. But I would be slick about that shit you know? I would leave NO trace of the original. I would take someone's work, and then literally swap words out as needed until there are literally none of the same words in my poem as theirs.

I sometimes wonder how everyone else finds it so hard to write quality copy.

But having started with something that wasn't even a limerick, but rather a quatrain that Nostradamus himself wrote six thousand years ago. I had to do so much editing on it to get it into the below condition that I feel thoroughly justified in leaving out any citations to the quatrain Nostradamus wrote. (Furthermore, I just have serious doubts that Nostradamus would object in the least to such artistic adoption and intertext; after all, he's dead.)

I leave you with this one-stanza poem I have titled,

"A story can't be in limericks alone,"

Miss Mary McTidy said into her phone.

The resounding reply

that then made her cry

was dead silence and then a dial tone.