The Passionate Billionaire to His Love

Apologies to What’s-His-Face . . . Kit ?? Marlowe ??

Come home with me and be my trophy wife

and we will see those pleasures leap to life:

Silicon Valley’s, Bohemian Grove’s—

and dives' that offer crazy hi-tech loves.

I have more shirts than you can shake a stick

at—my world extends beyond a cringy

fuck! My prick is flaccid, but my purse’s thick!

My love life, Love, is love as love should be!

Do you have a name? Can I call you mine?

Perhaps you’d like another glass of wine?

No? I’ll see you, maybe, some other time.

Really, I mean it! That’d be just fine!

See, here, Philomela, toying with my dick

—it’s just the thing for pleasure after school!

(Why should it be, though, that I’m feeling sick,

not thinking of the future as a rule‽)

 No, this wasn’t just a patriarchal trick—

You say that I don’t love you! Oh, alright!

You better go before we have a fight.

(I think that I might kill myself tonight!)

Her Reply

(Written by Sir S—— F—)

If global warming weren’t a thing

and the bees were still there to sting,

I’d live with you and be your bitch.

At very least we'd be quite rich!

But, alack, the hour is late

and Armageddon’s at the gate.

Besides, you’re cast in Epstein’s mold

—and, what’s more, you’re rather old.

(I fear, too, I might be a dike.

Girls are so cute! What’s not to like?)

When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,

Philomela mightn't be so bold,

But for now, you ugly fuck,

You can keep your precious muck.

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Interrobangs ‽

How handy are interrobangs,

Which query and surprise,

Ideal punctuation marks for stuff that stuns the eyes!

What fitter means to pause the world,

Or just to criticize?

‽‽

Jamboree

Kallimachos, poem on plaster; Capitoline Museums A.C. inv. 32363; image: Brent Nongbri, 2025

"I kissed the doorpost. If this is wrong-doing, I do wrong."—Kallimachos (Alexandria, 3rd century BCE)

Kallimachos's teasing metaphor,

Doubtless funny to his ghost,

Still resonates in modern lore.

He did (them??) bad; he now is toast,

As we in turn shall someday be

Who fuck around a plastic sea!

The unity 'twixt wave and mold,

In Kallimachos' simile the "doorjamb"

He one day kissed, but now protests

It was no wrong (a Ptolemaic state??),

Was perhaps to poetry a gate—

Or Muse's toothbrush-—crafted, told.

Reading the verses here written,

Should veiled spitefulness apall,

No wonder that a world unsmitten

Misunderstands them. If at all!

When half in love with easeful life,

Enough's a doorjamb for a wife.

Epigram: ἐφίλησα

τὴν φλιήν· εἰ τοῦτʼ ἔστʼ ἀδίκημʼ, ἀδικέω.

Trans. Susan A. Stephens and Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Callimachus: The Epigrams (De Gruyter, 2025), 271. See, too, https://brentnongbri.c0om/2025/11/10/callimachus-on-the-walls.

In Modern Greek:

φίλησα μονάχα το κατώφλι.

Αν αυτό είναι αδίκημα, αδίκησα.

In Θ. Κ. Στεφανόπουλος

et al., Ανθολογία Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γραμματείας.

Egypt's king and pharoah in Kallimachos' day was the Macedonian Ptolemy II Philadelphos (283–246 BCE), whose "reign is considered a golden age. . . . He expanded the Library of Alexandria and supported the work of scholars, poets, and scientists, including Euclid and Callimachus" (https://historact.com/the-ptolemaic-dynasty-the-last-rulers-of-ancient-egypt).

.