Now, at the end of Acorn’s lifelong journey, He found himself deep in a silent wood, The slate-grey sky foreboding, dense, and stormy. An evil fucking cat kept scheming brood Upon his back, a burden unremitting. As Acorn cantered on, he understood Their destination would be one befitting An unrepentant sinner such as he. But then that cat of darkness started shitting. And now it seemed that every shrub and tree Was naught but cat shit sown in shitty earth; A shitty island in a shitty sea. The cat shit on, and laughed with gleeful mirth At Acorn’s clear disgust at such a sight. And now, like an inverted fecal birth, They neared the source of this unholy blight – A guano gate, upon which words appeared In script that burnèd red with fiery light: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. “Derivative,” said Acorn, “and cliché.” “I’d say ‘Dantesque,’” the cat replied, “but we’re Not in this place to sightsee.” Acorn neighed, “The suffix ‘–esque’ implies a likeness, not A phrase that’s stolen wholesale – which conveys The writer’s laziness, like they forgot Allusion must be more than blatant theft.” Caught up in meta-referential thoughts, The pony failed to notice they had left The realm of life, and entered that of death. Of light and joy, of love and mirth bereft, This cloudy and adumbral land impressed Upon its visitor an eerie calm, As if some cosmic power held Its breath.