Of all the beasts which, if they’re lost, please don’t put out a tracer
Approximately the very top of my personal list is the one they call “Displacer”.
If I see one, I’ll likely ask for gin, with a bit of an arsenic chaser
Given my choice, I’d treat the whole species with one giant eraser.
Query submitted for your consideration:
Why have a creature with such a talent for teleportation?
It indicates a Universe with a terrible sense of organization.
We’ve got some awful weird Gods to make such weird miscreation.
(Some Gods are drunk, some Gods are coked
This creator-God is A.E. van Vogt.
We’re not sure just what he toked
Or what peculiar serums, poked.)
(Was it incense? Was it hash?
Overindulging in the Monster Mash?
Were his tastes a little queer?
Did he watch the unholy on his palantir?)
Whatever it was, this beast’s creator
Decided to go for ‘logic later’
Going instead, for reasons mystic,
A monster that’s utterly surrealistic.
Now I’ll admit: I read Van Vogt
Long before Gygax spoke’d*
I’ve read lots of science fiction
A victim of that weird addiction.
But I can’t seem to make this (at least)
Describe the damn Displacer Beast.
I do my best with the words I’ve got
But where I try to describe it, the Beast is not.
I think I’ll go back to writing Underdarks
Or of John Carter (Sark of Sarks)
And leave this poem slightly ill,
Triumph of no rhyming will.
Displacer beast, go! go! displace!
I’m going to put whiskey in my face.
___________
[I write things. You can find some of them on Amazon.]
* This is a terrible rhyme, and I am ashamed of myself.
