tortoise

the devils dictionary
A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:

TO MY PET TORTOISE

My friend, you are not graceful — not at all;
Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.

Nor are you beautiful: your head's a snake's
To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.

As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.

No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
A certain firmness — mostly you're backbone.

Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
Are virtues that the great know how to use —

I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
You lack — excuse my mentioning it — Soul.

So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
I'd rather you were I than I were you.

Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
When Man's extinct, a better world may see

Your progeny in power and control,
Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.

So I salute you as a reptile grand
Predestined to regenerate the land.

Father of Possibilities, O deign
To accept the homage of a dying reign!

In the far region of the unforeknown
I dream a tortoise upon every throne.

I see an Emperor his head withdraw
Into his carapace for fear of Law;

A King who carries something else than fat,
Howe'er acceptably he carries that;

A President not strenuously bent
On punishment of audible dissent —

Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;

Subjects and citizens that feel no need
To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;

All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.

O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
My glorious testudinous régime!

I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
(also: god)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

laureate

the devils dictionary
adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the aspect of a national crime.


(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

notoriety

the devils dictionary
The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

black hole

trustycoffeemug
a star begins its life as a nebula, a large ionized gaseous cloud that eventually coalesces and ignites.

after some millions of years of life, the star then 'dies;' either it simply dwindles away to a white dwarf and then a frigid black dwarf, or it lights up and explodes into a cosmic inferno known as a supernova. when a supernova finally clears, all that remains is a black hole.

black holes consist of a star's mass compressed into an infinitesimal point, creating such a tremendous gravitational pull that light cannot escape and the very fabric of spacetime is warped to the breaking point like a saranwrap trampoline that's had a bowling ball dropped on it.

stephen hawking invented them, or something.

prehistoric

the devils dictionary
Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
He lived in a period prehistoric,

When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
Born later, when Clio, celestial recorder,
Set down great events in succession and order,
He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
—Orpheus Bowen
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

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