(A reader’s recent comment on a year-old post about a website for laid-off Baltimore Sun journalists prompted this verse-form poem by another commenter, Usha Nellore, about the region’s daily newspaper. We hope she doesn’t mind that we fished it out of “Comments” and gave it a title. The “Monty” in the poem is J. Montgomery Cook, former Sun editor, who resigned from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill after allegations surfaced that the married Cook had had an inappropriate relationship with a female student.)

The six part series–gone,
When Monty said “Gone!”
Then Chiaki gone!
Ollison limited (?)
Therefore Ollison gone,
Monica poured out guts-
on New Orleans completely gone–
to Katrina–Monica also gone,
spelling gone to pot because
copy editors gone,
writing for a living gone,

writing for catharsis,
writing for confession,
writing in search of meaning,
vindication, revenge,
writing to prove writing is possible,
when writing has been bought out,
retired, fired–
in the retired, the bought out,
and the fired–writing to prove–
writing is not gone-
in the writers’ project–
for a flitting time–writing not gone.

But Monty–gone,
Said, “Writing should be crisp, terse,
paperless, interactive,
improvised, bite sized,
easy on the eye,
summarized,
for the attention deficit crowd,
writing should be fast, fluid,
flippant, effervescent,
old, rigid, slow, profound,
no, no, no, no–out!”
Monty said, ” Dinosaurs,
poor performers, one trick ponies,
will be–should be-
inevitably–buried,
in journalism,
there is no place for laggards or dullards!”

Monty said, “You gone, he gone,
she gone, they gone,
everybody gone gone,
except the man who’s ready to move
from sports to fashion,
the woman who can go from fashion to crime,
or from news local to news national,
the man, woman or child who can go flying
from topic to topic, jack of all– master of none,
that’s the one–not gone!”

But Monty himself gone!
You gasp, why Monty gone?
By writing gone,
by crisp, terse,
paperless, improvised,
bite sized,
vexing, texting, sexting–
says the grapevine,
Monty given the boot –gone–
says the grapevine,
Monty couldn’t curb it– gone–
says the grapevine–
Monty victim of his own success,
victim of his own sermons,
gone, gone, gone,
in teaching, in university,
where Monty went,
says the grapevine–
Monty was tripped by Cupid,
No–cupidity,
No–stupidity,
vacuous, fatuous,
fast, fluid, flippant,
flew his piquant message,
to a woman averse to fast, fluid, flippant-
says the grapevine-
Monty, the apprentice, was fired by the dean
who thundered, “You have done that woman wrong.
Be gone!”

What goes around, comes around,
Round Robin Round,
Before it is gone, gone, gone!