Wilde About The Man

[Frank E Gibbard]

Oscar Wilde and diverse

others lived in never worse

times to be freely as happy

as they were inwardly gay.

For Law saw in an adverse

way, their bent as if to say,

abandonment of the norm,

a disinclination to perform

morally with due propriety,

in their Christian society;

which forebade a sexual

act, hidebound to a man

by a certain Biblical tract.

When Bosie took Oscar's

fancy he dared to defy it.

If any called them nancy

this was the low tittle-tattle

of particularly bovine cattle

Against a Wildean true wit.

too clever by half our Oscar

couldn't resist looking for the

easy laugh, even at his trial

he wouldn't a jot tone down

the famed debonair witty style.

Couldn't sublimate his certain

feeling giving it away in a literal

display. Was wont to flaunt it

dauntlessly under no bushel

no not he, when asked did he

kiss a particular guy he would

answer why would I? Wasn't this

chap too ugly. Laughter in his

Court which he had sought but

on the part of the prosecuting

counsel: a chance to pounce

extracting every ounce from

his pounded flesh, long time

would the writer reflect and

regret at a majesty's leisure

loss of freedom and so hard

fought for pleasure henceforth

denied those two years inside

in Reading jail where he was then

heading; regarding his tent that

prisoners call the sky, asking why

oh why, oh why, oh why, oh did I?

 

(the oh why's echoe OW his initials).

.