Poem Shards

 

   There was a certain . . . person with a 
       particular job in a prominent
     industry
    getting up and going to work every day
  without a factory or an office
    in which to design 
       do-dadds for sale
   to hire marketting guys
      from the futball college
    and making a collage
     from photos of them
   and printing up a newspaper.

  Someone said he had a particular knack
     for heart felt stories 
   that made people unfriend the concept of lack
   so tied to envy.  They'd go on like this.
   I'd listen to a while.
     even learned to do it for a while.
  your envy.  Diagram a sentence about 
  your need to have what others have had first
   until they don't want it anymore
  and then you won't want it either.

  I knew a guy like that.
    He didn't diagram sentances.
  He was very logical
     about some things.

  But that other one.
    He'd gone to the big name school
   and read expensive textbooks on thinking
  that brought him to tears realizing
      his beliefs in tribalism
   and family
      were falacies
  of the grandest type he was told
     not considering that the trickster
   doesn't care about the convictions of those the trickster betrays.

  But if it's a happy pro-plus-good trickster
   who uses foolery to fool the stuck
   then let that trickster briing the luck
    And Molliere will sing and jesticulate
    in humorous ways with which we all relate . . .

       It was hard to be sad after watching that show.
    They paid tribute to dead playwrite/actors.

  Rip up your book of antique French plays
  Throw the pages into the air
     as you stand on the railing
    above the balcony, three floors down.

  "Rise up, ye fearful losers and run
   to the day of the un
    friend the foes of Liberty!"

  Losers?  Who's he calling a loser?
     Fearful?  Not me.
   find out what he wants to do.
     Do you understand his ballywho?

And the fuss and fray was 
     condemned
     and the expensive dress
        was rehemmed.

  And then he started to hum
    meanwhile chewing on gum.

    And the characters of the bad play part of the presentation
   have bowed out.  There is love here now
     in the room.
  Elvis might have left the building
     but he came right back in after walking around to the other side.

   
      from poem page 165