Oh Jeez …

So, Krys saw me writing those double dactyls last night, and said “The new National Geographic has an article about Hatshepsut, a female king of Egypt. Write a sonnet about her.”

And god help me I did. Most of the “facts” of the I got from the article, which was kinder to her nephew Thutmose III than I ‘ve been:

Hatshepsut’s Tooth

For twenty years the king had kept her throne
And now an abscessed tooth was killing her —
At least, it hurt the most, though every bone
Conspired to be chief torturer,
Though every inch of gut was filled with snakes.
She wanted just to die, to speak the spells
And passwords of the dead without mistakes,
Leaving her works as her memorials.
And die she did. They sealed her broken tooth
Away; her nephew waited twenty years
To strip her corpse and order that the truth
Be chiseled from the stones to stop his fears:
    Three thousand years until that tooth was found
    To match that naked mummy, freshly crowned.

It’s a terrible title, and I make no claims about the quality of the poem, and I’m certainly not saying I’m going to write 26 more poems this month. But I am two days ahead …

If I get a brain cell or two I’ll podcast it tonight.

And be done with madness.

Update 22:26: Podcast is done. Madness?