{"id":19029,"date":"1993-11-22T20:51:54","date_gmt":"1993-11-23T01:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?page_id=19029"},"modified":"2026-04-04T16:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:30:15","slug":"satanic-cattle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/shorts\/satanic-cattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Satanic Cattle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sectiontop\"><span class=\"cat\">This is a poem my brother and I wrote while I was going to school in St. Joe in 1993. I had a poetry teacher I couldn\u2019t stand, but who absolutely loved me. So, basically, we wrote this poem to mock the entire art form, my teacher knew it, and he was not really very happy with me for doing it. I think his exact comment was, \u201cThe rhyme is cloying.\u201d Well, duh.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"top60\">\n<div class=\"lr8\">\nYou have to start from where you\u2019re at\u2014<br \/>\nTake the highway; watch bugs splat<br \/>\nOn your windshield, rat-a-tat-tat.<br \/>\nlike an ethereal welcome mat,<br \/>\nthat lies above the ozone hat.<br \/>\nAbout which environmentalists love to chat.<br \/>\nSome days, you hit cats.<br \/>\nothers, you\u2019re not so lucky as that.<br \/>\nBut only if you start where you\u2019re at.<\/p>\n<p>When you reach St. Joe<br \/>\n(an urban dynamo)<br \/>\nwhere strawberry sundaes don\u2019t melt so slow,<br \/>\nAnd poets you know<br \/>\nread Richard Hugo,<br \/>\nnot Victor, who I\u2019ve heard, drives a green Yugo.<br \/>\nThen, amigo,<br \/>\nYou\u2019ll be aware of that emerald auto,<br \/>\nand it\u2019s pounding staccato.<\/p>\n<p>This city has an angst of its own,<br \/>\nAbove the clamor of fiendish traffic,<br \/>\nAbove the drone of wailing industry.<br \/>\nFor satanic cattle roam the fields,<br \/>\nAnd quote ribald verses with the power they wield.<br \/>\nThen they shit all over like they\u2019re on deal-a-meal.<br \/>\nBubba, your uncle, and your sister, his wife,<br \/>\nhave invited you over for a fight with a knife.<br \/>\nThough friendly it may be, you politely decline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll get used to it,\u201d they say,<br \/>\nAs they all run away,<br \/>\nin frantic display<br \/>\nof unseemly trepida-<br \/>\ntion. For above your head,<br \/>\nThere glows bright red,<br \/>\nA mushroom cloud, and now you\u2019re dead.<br \/>\nSo much for St. Joe, the pundits said.<br \/>\nThey wheel you away, though minus your head.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"star\">&#9733;<\/p>\n<div class=\"date\">&#169;&#160;1993<br \/>\n20250925<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a poem my brother and I wrote while I was going to school in St. Joe in 1993. I had a poetry teacher I couldn\u2019t stand, but who absolutely loved me. So, basically, we wrote this poem to mock the entire art form, my teacher knew it, and he was not really very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6087,"menu_order":93,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19029","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19029"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24705,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19029\/revisions\/24705"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}