I have a very bad habit.When I get up to take a leak, which at my age I'm lucky if I can keep it down to a single trip each night, instead of going back to sleep, I pull my pillows over my head and compose poetry.
It usually starts as I start up the stairs, a line comes to mind which seems fine and I try to unravel the skein of words and see if there other lines. What follows is an example of time perhaps better spent cutting Z's.
Sooo, without further ado, I present you a little bit of rhyming wit that would have been worthy of that famous unknown poet from the Third Galaxy and offer my resignation from the human race...
I've canceled my subscription to that bunch of naked apes,__________________
that is to say that I'm resigning from the human race!
I've altered my allegiances in content, form and shape
and deny responsibility for what is taking place:
The consequences of greed and hate in global climate change;
in famine; in death; disease and then -- total Ultimate War.
It's not my fault at all that the human race has gone insane!
It happens frequently, it's happened many times before,
and every time, just like a drunk, sober after a binge,
all bleary eyed, he coughs and wipes the vomit from his chin.
He chokes and cries and swears by God, "I'll never do that again!"
But the chances are what the chances are -- that is, rather slim!
[Alas!]
It may well be the "I'm not human!" plea won't fly in Court*!
Like most poor folks, I forgot to read what's writ in the fine print!
I'll end up holding the end of the stick that's shitty and short!
I'll stand accused, not for what I did, but what I didn't!
But still, it's my intention to cancel all my subscriptions
and resign.
I decline to be a member of the human race!
* "Court" is deliberately in caps here and if you don't know why, an explanation would be more of a waste of time than what I piddled away composing my resignation.
2 comments:
It's interesting that your thoughts can be released in poetry form and that your poetry reveals much of your inner being, sometimes witty, sometimes melancholy, sometimes hurting. Have you tried keeping a pad of paper and pencil either next to the bed or in the bathroom for the nighttime creative meanderings?
Thanks for your kind comments! A pad of paper? O yes, I've tried many tricks but have found that writing things down is not always best -- it's like things get "locked" or "frozen" fast before one has found the "melody".
This could become quite a long dissertation, but the question is what makes it poetry? And to answer that one has to ask what is language, what is music?
As a provocation, I sometimes claim that the first human speech was poetry -- the point being that when we first began to speak it was with our complete being and everything we said was, so to speak, "true".
Whatever, this particular piece was composed in its final form while walking in the woods up in Sweden Palm Sunday weekend -- this is one of my favorite ways of composing, that is by singing or speaking the words until I have "found" the way it is "supposed" to be.
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