Filibuster Stew
by Rachel Hoyt
Hitler, Stalin, and Yertle the Turtle
were weak compared to the Wicked Witch Myrtle.
With powers sucked from her mom's crystal ball,
brewed by mixed blood and hatred towards all,
she cast her first and only curse
not to change her life but to make theirs worse.
The daughter of Philip "Buster" Locke
and a gypsy who on his door did knock
one night to ask to sit by the fire
with whom fate and grandpa did conspire
to lock down frivolity rights for all time
by conniving to churn life's lemons to limes.
Buster Senior had not been happy to see
his son defiling a lowly gypsy,
but he knew that their union would birth
a witch with powers of wicked worth -
Shunned by all as directed by him,
Myrtle's life grew quite lonely and grim.
Out in the forest, talking to weeds,
Myrtle met her grandpa, a man of few needs.
He tossed her a spell book and a leather pouch,
from high on a saddle as plush as a couch.
"Vengeance can be yours," was all that he said
before galloping towards dusk gleaming red.
He'd marked the page obviously with a wand,
because, at this time, Myrtle was a blonde.
The shiny staff begged her to flip the page and mix a brew
of something the spirits call Filibuster Stew.
With supplies provided she thought, "Why not?"
and, from the nearest house, Myrtle stole a pot.
Over bubbling tears, rain drops, silk, diamonds,
and currency from wealthy nations and islands,
Myrtle cast her wishes into the fog,
"Stubborn as cement, like bumps on a log -
Let them earn exile for their idle hands
which claim sole frivolity rights in the land."
With a fiery bang, Myrtle's hair turned dark black
and she knew that there would be no turning back.
The smoke from the cauldron blew across the town
and swirled around each lady in a gown.
Their children began to scold and be the frivolous -
ignorant of their isolation, they wax on sounding bibulous.
© 2013
Rachel Hoyt. All rights reserved.
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