Celebrating Questionable Anniversaries
My husband sent me a video today (warning about R-rated language usage in the video) that relates to when Fabio was hit in the face by a bird during a promotional event at Busch Gardens Tampa.
I wasn’t sure if my husband remembered that I had written a poem years ago about this very event, or if he had just sent me the video for fun. In either case, I had a good laugh on multiple levels while watching the video, although I don’t think I’ll buy the romance novel the video creator put together which includes clues to finding the diorama depicted in the video.
The poem, What I Thought after Fabio Was Hit in the Face by a Bird at Busch Gardens, was published online in 2011. I don’t know if I ever really thought about the fact that the alleged bird was a Canadian goose, but my poem was published in Wild Goose Poetry Review which is another bit of a chuckle.
A slightly revised version of the poem (same words, slightly different ending linebreak) appeared in my second full-length collection of poems MORPH which was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013.
So what am I trying to say here?
Some stories just seem to keep coming back around. The Fabio event happened in 1999 and is now 25 years old! I originally thought of the idea to write about it in 2010, wrote about it and had it published in 2011, revised it some in 2013 for book publication, and here I am still thinking about it. Why does it still resonate in various ways? How long before no one remembers it and/or Fabio?
I decided to ask AI.
“I wrote this poem in 2010 and it is now the 25th anniversary of when Fabio was actually hit by the bird. Could you collaborate on coming up with a new version of the poem which brings up the anniversary and tries to consider why this is a story we keep coming back to?”
Here’s what I got
Here's a new version of the poem commemorating the 25th anniversary of Fabio getting hit by the bird, while considering why this story has endured:
What I Thought, 25 Years After Fabio Was Struck by a Feathered Bolt
In the year of our stride two-thousand twenty-four We reflect on that fateful day of lore
When a muscled icon of passion's fire Met his match in a bird's feathered ire
As Fabio graced that Busch Gardens' scene With chiseled looks, a true romance supreme An avian assailant took spirited umbrage
Delivering a plume-blown act of savage
This clash 'twixt nature and Adonic ideal
Proved even gods can face the unpredictable We gawked, we gasped at that surreal tableau Where the objectified became the subject's faux pas
Why does this tale still enrapture our mind? In its absurdity, amusement we find
A reminder that fantasies have their place But the whims of reality we can't efface
Fabio's fabled fall from his pedestal peak
Unmasks the vulnerability we all seek To laugh at the comeuppance of arrogant charm And find human kinship in the world's random harm
So we revel in this enduring verse of the freak A timeless truth of the meek over the sleek Lest we forget, when idolizing the dream Even icons of lust can fall victim to life's comedic scheme
I would not have gone with a rhyme, and I don’t have the desire to iterate right now, but I like what Claude has considered, even while Squarespace struggled to format this ;)
