It's a Friday, so I thought I'd post my first attempt at Perl poetry. It compiles with '-c', but that's about all I'll claim. (Please be gentle.) It is my interpretation, rather crude, of the old Irish ballad "The Long Black Veil". For a source, I used the version by Mick Jagger and The Chieftains on the later's album of the same name.

#! /usr/bin/perl


$it=(localtime)[5] - 10;        # It was ten years ago on a cold, 
@night=('cold', 'dark');        # dark night, there was someone 
$light->townhall;               # killed 'neath the townhall light.
kill 9,$someone;

$#witness = (4+rand 4);         # Just a few at the scene, but
for ($i=0;$i<$#witness;$i++)    # They all did agree. The man who
{                               # ran looked a lot like me
  $witness[$i]="yes" && $man{$ran} =~ /^.*$me.*$/;
}

($alibi && $me{location} ne "here") or die;
                                # The judge said "Son, what's your
                                # alibi? If you were somewhere
                                # else, then you don't have to die"

if ($she{arms} eq $me) { print "" && die;}
                                # But I spoke not a word, though it
                                # meant my life. I'd been in the
                                # arms of my best friend's wife

#
# Chorus
#

sub chorus
{
$she{walks}="./hills";          # She walks these hills in a long
$she{wears}=$veil{long} . $veil{black};
                                # black veil.
if ( (localtime[2] < 3 || localtime[2] > 21) &&
        $wind{speed} > 30)      # She visits my grave when the night
{                               # night winds wail.
  sub grave($she) { ; }

}
undef @knows; undef @sees;      # Nobody knows, nobody sees,
my @knows;                      # Nobody knows but me
}
#
# End chorus
#

while (0..4) { $scaffold++; }   # The scaffold's high
pop @time;                      # an eternity nears
splice @crowd, int($#crowd/2), 0, $she;
                                # She stands in the crowd
$she{H20} = $she{H20};          # and sheds not a tear

if ( rand 1 < .33 && (localtime[2] < 3 || localtime[2] > 21) &&
        $wind{speed} > 30)
                                # But sometimes at night, when the
{                               # cold wind moans,
  $she{wears}=$veil{long} . $veil{black};
  $she{H20}--/(my $bones);
                                # In a long black veil, she cries
                                # all over my bones.
}

# Repeat chorus

&chorus;

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--
tbone1
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

In reply to The Long Black Veil by tbone1

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