"13 Ways of Looking at a Blackguard"

or

The "Rich Girard is an Asshole" Poem

(with apologies to Wallace Stevens)

I
Among the static of 20 radio stations,
The only raving thing
Was the mouth of the blackguard Rich Girard.

II
The blackguard was of two minds,
Like a lunatic in an asylum
In which there are sociopaths.

III
The blackguard Girard laughed after his “act of contrition”.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A woman victimized by blackguard Girard
Is treated like a zero.

V
I do not know which most to abhor,
The rank hypocrisy
Or the sin of simony,
Blackguard Girard’s phony act of contrition
Or his “back to normal” shtick thereafter.

VI
Icicles filled his listeners’ souls
From news of his barbarity.
The shadow of the blackguard Girard’s evil
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the his evil
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O fat cats of the Queen City,
Why do you tolerate this moral pimp?
Do you not see how the blackguard Girard
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know of foul deeds
That would curl my hair (If I had any);
But I know, too,
That the blackguard Girard is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackguard Girard flew into yet another rage,
It marked the edge
Of one of his many delusions.

X
At the sight of blackguard Girard
Doing his show on Manchester Public TV,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
The blackguard drove around Manchester
In a car financed with a “kickback”.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The face glimpsed through the window
For one of his victims.

XII
The river of bulls— flowing from the radio stinks.
The blackguard Girard must be on air again.

XIII
It was a Friday afternoon.
The revelations were coming
And the s— was hitting the fan.
The blackguard Girard sat before his computer screen
Reading posts not yet revealed
With only one hand on the keyboard.