I dispatch a colonel with a pen,
no treaty to commend him.
How quiet he is!
I dine on a great oar, pay
their servant to row
and rest my mouth.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 4 April 1660.
Dave Bonta (bio) often suffers from imposter syndrome, but not in a bad way — more like some kind of flower-breathing dragon, pot-bellied and igneous. Be that as it may, all of his writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).