Poet and novelist Irving Vanderblock-Wheedle had a fortunate escape this week when his office at Duck Hollow University caught fire. The world of literature, however, was not so fortunate. This charred scrap of paper is all that remains of the long poem Mr. Vanderblock-Wheedle had been working on for the last three years.

—to whom
But the groom?
And the broom, I assume.
But still, to resume:
From the dark weeds that bloom
Where the dank shadows loom
Comes the straggling fume of a sickly perfume
In the gloom of my womb-like tomb of a room;
Then something goes boom,
And I flee from my doom,
And I get in my car and I rev it, vroom vroom,
And I step on the pedal and fly—zoom zoom zoom!
And I spill down the hill like a log in a flume,
Vowing never to stop till I get to Khartoum,
And I—

Police and fire investigators say they are proceeding under the assumption that the fire was set deliberately.

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My verse is free when it’s constrained.
It must be disciplined and trained
To ramble with abandoned glee:
    So true it is that freedom isn’t free.

That thought should take its wings from form
Is no exception, but the norm.
I cannot run without my feet
    (Which is a pun that’s really rather neat).

Through scribbling poems at last I’ve found
That freedom’s freest when it’s bound;
And what is true in poems is true
    Superlatively when I’m bound to you.

I’m only free to be the me
I think I really ought to be
If I am yours and you are mine.
    So—hem—well—will you be my valentine?