Bang the Eliot Slowly

So the OED is not so prudish with this definition. They include the usual:

1. a. A heavy resounding blow, a thump.

1601 Shakes. Jul. C. iii. iii. 20 You'l beare me a bang for that I feare.

And of course you have

2. a. A sudden, violent or explosive noise; e.g. the report of fire-arms.

both of which seem to be in line with the original Old Norse and Old Swedish definitions, meaning a "hammering." Would that this blog program would allow me to reproduce the IPA pronuncuation of this word, but having the a+e vowel plus the nasal ng symbol, it just isn't clever enough to cut and paste. But please trust me when I say that this word is echoic!

If we look further, though, we have a bit more fun. We get into the doomsday effect:

c. spec. A nuclear explosion.
1957 J. Osborne Look back in Anger iii. i, If the big bang does come, and we all get killed off, it won't be in aid of the old-fashioned grand design.

Funny that no mention is made here to the Big Bang Theory at all; could this point towards a dictionary bias towards intelligent design?

But then we have these gems:
4. colloq. A ‘thumping’ lie, a banger; bang-words: explosive epithets, ‘swear’ words.

5. [Cf. bang n.3] Excitement, pleasure; a ‘kick’. U.S. slang
1931 D. Runyon Guys & Dolls (1932) vi. 129 He seems to be getting a great bang out of the doings.

(Where WOULD we be without Broadway?)

6. [Cf. bang v.1 11.] An act of sexual intercourse. slang.

Yeah, hmmm.... makes me think of a bad joke my dad and I made up at the hardware store today while purchasing a fruit picker and noticing the hoes on sale. Don't ask.

But my favorite definition:

b. With allusion to T. S. Eliot's line (see quot. 1925).
1925 T. S. Eliot Hollow Men v. 31 in Poems 99 This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

1931 R. Aldington Colonel's Daughter i. 56, I wish you'd all shoot yourselves with a bang, instead of continuing to whimper.

So, our weekly CRS blog challenge, let's see if we can use all these in a poem:

Open Letter to the Hollow Men (with apologies to T.S. Eliot)

Bang! the door of Time's winged chariot slammed
On the hem of your twice-rolled trousers.
And I would not eat that peach if I were you --
Teeth or no teeth, its lived through the bang of Hiroshima
Both radiant and old. (Can you be both as well?)
If men were horses surely you'd face the bang of a musket.
(More mercy, perhaps than the bang-words of teens
Who mock your short pants and thinning hair.)
You ask if you are old when a lover turns away
After a bang, and declares herself unsatisfied.
I cannot answer that, you see
I cannot answer that at all.

But if I were you at the end of the world,
If I were you at the end of the world,
If I were you at the end of the world,
I'd go out with a bang, not a whimper.