Esquire Wars / Viva Vidal!

I was a brash senior in high school;

William F. Buckley fired the first round…

Gore Vidal sued and fought back,

Esquire magazines sold out in town.

Smack in the middle of the Esquire war,

Critics deemed Gore Vidal out of luck…

Until the moment he told Mr. Buckley,

You can shoot a gun when “You’re too fat to f&@k”!

I may have lived more pedestrian

Had I never read Palimpsest…

I believed no more in the status quo

And never settled again for less.

Another intellectual falls,

Into the abyss of a hero’s lost words…

Gore’s thoughts far too heavy to carry

Spread like dropped feathers of migrating birds.