From: dwhitesi@tiercel.uwaterloo.ca (Dawn Whiteside)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: REPOST: to thine own demon be true
Date: 1 Dec 2000 19:39:40 GMT
Organization: where the sun don't shine
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <908ups$iec$1@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>
Summary: first posted 30 august 1993
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test66 (4 June 1998)

there are hundreds of apochryphal tales of the
devil facing down fiddle players and dancing
them down the road.  i do not fiddle and make
no claims of my vocal stylings, so he avoided
the area of music altogether.

other stories speak of learned and vain men
who sold their souls in exchange for wealth,
fame, knowledge and so many useless baubles.
i find such trinkets amusing only when i have
earned them with the sweat of my brow, so he
did not seek to entangle me in such a contract.

i told him that i could write, not terribly well
but with feeling.  he knew i am too proud to
accept a silver pen or tongue, even as a gift
with no apparent requirement for repayment.  we
sat down and traded narratives, his elegant and
polished, mine crude and visceral.

he asked me if i could write to save my soul.
i poured him a cup of whiskey and laughed like
a condemned man.

--d