I. The Man in the Song
The man in the song went to call in his bride.
He yelled out across
a chasm seven rivers wide.
The bride in the song then enlightened her child:
“Your father’s a fake.
I found you in the wild!”
The child in the song bellered out at his nurse,
“The right or the left –
but hurry up, I’ll die of thirst.”
The nurse in the song hankered after the man.
He said, “But I can’t,
for we’re of the same clan.”
Ahhh! And thus they go around,
one after one. Do they ever run aground?
Ahhh! The song’s another place.
Sing it again. Let’s bring on another face.
The man with the pen grew incensed with his poem.
“Get out of that loop.
Find somewhere else to roam!”
The nurse in the song made to punish the dog.
“Get off of my leg,
or else I’ll toss you in the bog.”
The dog in the song whimpered back to the man.
His name wasn’t Bob
and his name wasn’t Stan.
Ahhh! And thus the chain is closed.
I could go on, but an ending was proposed.
Ahhh! They say the number three
is often the best. For convenience I’ll agree.
The man with the pen grew incensed with his poem.
“Get out of that loop.
Find somewhere else to roam!”
II. The Lyrical Man On the Dump
- near the fortieth
anniversary of Foucault’s
The Order of Things -
Some bricks, a few stones and a bundle of words.
To give it some life,
a thatch of shreds to place between them.
And none of it’s mine; or, not for me, that is –
though you wouldn’t care
if I called it my own.
If I had a box I’d think what I might take.
I’d row the things up
and let them gather into groups,
then thumb through the words, match them up with their things.
But what of the things
for which no names were found?
Ahhh! I’d build a house of things,
tossing in words that had not been found a match.
Ahhh! Straight up an English mile!
Words would evolve their own kingdoms, conflicts, faiths…
And that’s how it works, from the hills to the sea:
Our things are arranged
so that words will be free.
When words, ages hence, look for things to reclaim,
they’re not to be found –
and word is spread they never were,
‘til one of them thinks to look out from those heights
and learns of the waste
of which their house was made.
Ahhh! That’s surely not the way!
Turn it around and let word and thing change place.
Ahhh! Does not such interplay
make each take note of the other and its face?
And that’s how it works, from the hills to the sea:
Our words are arranged
so that things will be free!
III. The Man in the Poem
The man in the poem is a man with no name.
He marks out the pace,
never thinking of his own fame.
For fame is a thing that is not of the poem.
The poem is the man
and the man is alone.
The man in the poem often goes his own way,
both readying night
and establishing his own day.
He lives on a hill, where his visitors come.
They ask who he is
and he asks where they’re from.
Ahhh! He rests in the refrain.
Watch as he sleeps. Let the measures mind the train.
Ahhh! He modifies his pace.
See how the lines have collected on his face.
The poem is the man and the man is the poem.
The man is the poem
and the poem is his home.
The man in the poem leaves his loved ones behind.
They stick to his thoughts,
remaining vivid in his mind.
A few he forgets. To a few he returns,
forgetting their names,
which he learns and relearns.
The man in the poem gathers up all his threads –
the blues and the whites,
the duller grays, the gleaming reds.
For he is the poem and the poem is the man,
and neither were there
before the poem began.