By Rumple Oxbridge, liberal lyricist

A journalist of the conservative type
has branded my satirical prayer “a crime
against the idea of verse.” Well, well. I

plead guilty in this literary sense:
my verse lacks the sort of literariness
that isn’t concerned with truth or nonsense.

In other words, it’s a verse of ideas
that doesn’t shy from meter or rhyme, the fear
of sounding like old Alexander

Pope. I’m just popping, Poping off against
all that’s illiberal and self-importantly dense . . .
It is no crime to give offense

to what offends morality and honest thought.
And does so with a style not overwrought
or dull and makes of journalism a sport.

And what better sport is there to do
than making fun of National Review?
It stands athwart Liberalism (and Poetry, too), yelling “Boo!”