BEASTLY TALES

THE GENIUS

A person having exulted intellectual power,
Who can hold forth on his pet subject hour after hour.
Who can demonstrate without any doubt,
That intellectuality exists, they are no way a lout.
The possession of special mental endowments,
That intelligence is one of their basic empowerments.
Such is the stuff that a genius is about.
The belief in a subject, making them shout.
And so it was with our hero today,
He was just the smartest, what else can we say?

Oswald Snodgrass was this brainy gent.
For the medical profession, he seemed heaven sent.
He was always perfecting new procedures,
Brilliant methodologies to effect new cures.
If someone looked as though they might snuff it,
Oswald would suggest a radical procedure, and then guff it.
Yes, write it up in the Medical Journal,
Even if painful and somewhat infernal.

Even Oswald once got into some strife,
When he proclaimed discovery of the Elixir of Life!
It was quite a foul tasting brew,
With some solids, that required one to chew.
Oswald promptly, for a patient, did apply,
But people continued, in large numbers, to die.
Of jiggery-pokery Oswald was accused.
“Quackery” of the highest order, he wasn’t excused.
This was such a dastardly set back to his career,
That he refused to discuss it, just wouldn’t hear.

Oswald, now decided to take a stab,
At surgery. Yes, he’d take a jab.
With scalpel and syringe on operating table.
To increase his medical persona, if he was able.
The very first procedure he did attempt,
Was a resounding success, so he was now exempt,
From the stigma of his phoney elixir,
Having adequately proved he was no trickster,
Though some of his critics thought him capricious,
Although many of his potions were down right delicious.

Poor Oswald soon forsook the surgeon’s life.
He’d been dragged into an affair with the Surgeon General’s wife.
So, as he sadly took down his shingle,
Pondering the fact that he was still single.
He thought, “I know just what my pain will ease,”
“I’ll now become a surgeon of trees!”