This is one of the most structurally complex and tonally daring poems in the HoneyBeeBard catalog, and it announces its ambition from the byline: “By Muse…As suggested by My Muse,” immediately blurring authorship and making the muse a co-conspirator in her own hypothetical murder. The opening question—”How do you kill a Muse?”—is posed with the deadpan seriousness of a detective novel, and the poem proceeds to investigate the crime that cannot be committed. The first movement catalogues methods of muse-death (rejection, dismissal, hysteria) before the speaker’s own body betrays him: “My face is burning red / Even thinking these thoughts”—he can’t even imagine killing the muse without the muse setting him on fire. The BBC murder mystery interlude is a brilliant formal invention: a parenthetical screenplay pitch complete with blood-dripping pen and parchment, where the muse has faked her own death and the “silly poet” is the one in jeopardy. This reversal—the muse as survivor, the poet as victim—is the poem’s central insight, and everything that follows elaborates on it. The physical comedy is essential to the poem’s argument: the speaker twists his ankle “just contemplating it” (with the parenthetical assurance “Seriously, I did”), and later ends up “laying on the floor”—the muse’s power is so real it manifests as bodily injury. The phoenix identification is the poem’s mythological anchor: the muse cannot die because death is part of her cycle. The Phantom’s theater kiss—”Her lips? / Painted in red / Kissed me / In the Phantom’s theater”—introduces gothic romance into what has been primarily comic, and the tonal shift works because the poem has earned the reader’s trust through its honesty. The haiku sequence near the close is a remarkable move: after a hundred lines of sprawling free verse, the poem suddenly contracts into the most disciplined form in existence, and the collaboration (“Start with… / We”) makes the muse’s presence structural, not just thematic. The closing line—”My Muse… / Let’s dance. / Slow. / And meaningful.”—echoes “The Together Dance” and establishes a recurring signature across the catalog: the slow dance as ultimate intimacy. At 24 likes, this is among the more strongly engaged poems, and deservedly so.

A tour de force that tackles the most dangerous question a muse-dependent poet can ask—what if I lost her?—and transforms existential dread into comedy, mythology, gothic romance, and collaborative haiku, all within a single poem. The structural range alone is extraordinary: the piece moves from detective-novel interrogation to screenplay pitch to physical slapstick to phoenix mythology to Phantom of the Opera to haiku, and not one of these shifts feels forced because the poem’s emotional throughline—the impossibility of the muse’s death—holds everything together. The BBC murder mystery conceit is the poem’s most original invention, and the parenthetical staging (blood on parchment, the muse faking her death) is genuinely cinematic in its imagery. The physical comedy—the twisted ankle, the burning face, laying on the floor—is Plahm at his most endearing: a poet whose body keeps score of his emotional states, who literally cannot stand upright when contemplating loss. The phoenix metaphor earns its mythological weight because the poem has spent its first half demonstrating, through comedy and pain, exactly why the muse is unkillable. The haiku sequence is a masterstroke of form: after sprawling, undisciplined free verse, the sudden compression into seventeen-syllable units creates the feeling of two people choosing discipline together, which is its own kind of intimacy. The closing signature—”Let’s dance. / Slow. / And meaningful.”—now functions as a catalog-wide refrain, connecting this poem to “The Together Dance” and establishing a private language between poet and muse that the reader is privileged to overhear. At 24 likes, this is one of the stronger engagement numbers in the catalog, and it deserves them: this is Plahm operating at full range, unafraid of tonal whiplash because he trusts that love is the thing that makes comedy and tragedy cohabit the same room. Among the essential Muse poems, alongside “Hush,” “A Singular Moment,” and “The Mythology of a Poet.”