marcus bales
This poem was written in response to an odd pair of circumstances: a woman of my acquaintance had just not gotten a raise at work because of a perky-breasted new hire, and I happened to be explaining the term 'filk' to an online poetry listserv, and I needed an example, so I wrote one.
A 'filk' is a kind of poem that takes something of the form or style or manner of someone else's original piece but doesn't really reply to the original at all. Rather, it takes the salient characteristics of that original for the writer's own ends. The term "filk" originated as a typo in a sci-fi fan newsletter announcing a "folk song sing" back in memeograph days as a "filk song sing". Since even then many of the songs at sci-fi fan conventions were take-offs of other songs and poems, and the term "parody" was widely recognized as inappropriate, the term stuck.