I mused upon it and felt that rottening seemed like a poetic word, so I donned my Shel Silverstein hat and produced the following.
I agonized a bit on the 2008 reference since it might date the poem poorly, but in the end decided to leave it. When this surfaces after the apocalypse and is taught to the offspring of radioactive men-fish (much like the Iliad) the date will help them plot the important dates of decline toward the inevitable holocaust.
The Rottening
by Dan Judd
December 4, 2008
In twenty-oh-eight young Cynthia Straight
wrote notes in a class barely listening.
So shocked was her ear, her pen snapped in fear
of language dredged from her forgottening.
The horror, the sin, of the Rottening.
Her eyes bulged and strained as all her blood drained
to her feet as her chest began tightening.
A wet blackened sand discharged from her hand
from piercing pen parts painful pistoning.
The ebony paste of the Rottening.
Miss Straight rose and fled. The Rottening spread,
wrist arm elbow shoulder succumbing.
She came through her door black shuffling gore
and bandaged herself in fine cottoning.
Mummified she studied the Rottening.
Behind tarnished locks on Grandma's fell box
lurked The Book with necrotic bindings.
Scouring ardently her awful ancestry
brought clues betwixt births and begottenings
aeons all ending in Rottenings.
She needed more flesh, in volume quite fresh
to replenish her horrid unfastening.
A logical start, the Capitol's heart,
to force her curse into remissioning
rebuffing this outbreak of Rottening.
As governor fair addressed congress there
heinous spells commenced mass liquefying.
Then from the mayhem, a phoenix of phlegm,
the unbonded spawned new legislationing.
A being born free of the Rottening.
Cynthia was healed by congress congealed,
an act legal and charnelly binding.
Which forced her to stay in a governing way
for the time until the electioning.
A blessing bestowed by the Rottening.
Miss Straight became wed, changed names and it's said
brought six little girls in for christening.
But one turned her head, the water was shed,
and voided the purificationing.
The curse still endures. Fear The Rottening.
