NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 1–Watt: The Fugue

On the NaPoWriMo website the optional prompt is an invitation to base a poem on a term or terms in a glossary of music or art. I have chosen fugue.

Watt: The Fugue

James G. Watt was precursive

Of modern folly’s MAGA

Interior subversive

Exterior oil-gaga.

.

James Watt was an inventor

Helped industry to flower

Steam engines at its centre;

Gave voice to his hoarse power.

.

James Bruce Watt helped found Brewdog,

And after countless rounds,

Earned more than me or you, dog:

He’s worth two million pounds.

.

So here’s to James and James

And BOO to crook James G.

And What the Fugue? Hell’s flames

Are Oil-based, sez me.

.

Note: The glossary I used described a Fugue as having at least two and usually no more than four voices, but not necessarily singing voices. And WTF might stand for any number of things. And the American James G. Watt,  Secretary of the Interior during the Readan administration, helped trash the environment with profligate use of federal lands for oil drilling, was fired, became a lobbyist, was indicted for felony perjury, pleaded down to misdemeanor document-withholding, and lived out his last days in Wickenburg, Arizona. And the Scot James Watt helped jump-start the Industrial Revolution with steam engines, and invented the term horsepower; and the Brit James Bruce Watt co-founded BrewDog, a wildly popular string of pubs in Aberdeen and elsewhere, and Wikipedia says his net worth is around £250 million.