A Modern Retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”
By Danielle Schmitz
Once upon a moonlit midnight, I flapped my feathers fast in flight,
around a boring suburb looking to cause fright,
for no other reason than my own fiendish delight.
Through the streets I went perusing for a foolish human.
Someone of my choosing to abuse at my amusement.
When yonder did I spy, a deadbeat of a guy in a house down on the drive,
His emo music cranked up high, so high that I could hear it for a mile up in the sky.
Downward I did swoop, to rudely go intrude upon the moody loser brooding on his bedroom floor.
Weeping while Facebook creeping profile pictures of a popular girl he yearned for.
A blond bodacious cheerleader, the prom queen named Taylor.
Stealthily I stalked him, as I began a-gawking, knocking with my beak upon his patio door.
Haughtily I mocked him with my incessant squawking,
“Awwk! you’re a dork!
Quickly the simpering wimp lifted up his pimpled face,
beady eye’s shifting all about the place,
trying to locate the source of my debasing clamor.
He spun his greasy head, before he shrugged and said,
“It’s just the TV, and nothing more.”
Then he started sipping from a bottle of Kinky Pink liqueur
which he pilfered from his mommy at about a half past four.
So I persisted in my pecking, hell-bent on my heckling
of this pathetic peckerhead with his ego bruised and sore. I implored,
“Awwwk! Isn’t that a drink for girls?”
Finally he saw me, as I continued cawing,
rattling and prattling at his patio door.
Jerking to his feet, the little perve became unnerved,
as frazzled and unraveled as the skinny jeans he wore. Laughed I even more:
“Awwwk! what a nerd!”
Oh what a joy to annoy this boy with my coyness!
Harking snarky remarks out from the darkness, I harped on the dork about his lack of dating prowess.
As I proceeded to pester him, his temper began a-festering
as he flung open the door roaring at me with these words,
“Well if I might be grumpy, it’s only cause she dumped me
for a hunk named Brad, when I was sure she liked me more.” To this I cackled back,
“Awwwk! You’ll never score!”
The pining wiener went on whining: “You know Its just so vexing,
that she won’t even text me, and my voicemail messages she won’t even return.”
Oh this nerd was nothing against I the cunning bird
whose words whirred around this teenage turd. Jauntily I concurred:
“Awwwwk! You’re just friends and nothing more!”
But this he did ignore, as he grabbed his cell phone off of the floor,
intending to drunk text selfies to the popular Taylor.
Thus I realized, he was committing social suicide,
so I ceased my chiding to put this to and end before he could hit send.
Flying inside without a pause, I snatched the phone up with my claws.
Back into the clouds I stormed, I was doing him a favor. Croaked I, the Raven:
“Awwwk! You’ll Thank me later!”