New Poem, Only Read Out Twice
Good to One's Word, At One with One's Art
Alone in a cabin
the babbling brook doing its
duties
as prescribed by its preceding
modifier
While I do the same
In solitary self-medicated
mutterings
metaphors no one understands
or cares to
The subconscious
is a dark place
and this cabin has but one
light bulb
dangling naked from the ceiling
an archaic filament illumination
No sense in saving energy
Not this time.
Give it all you got.
A Steely Dan tune plays
from the speaker of the record player,
I played with the idea of recording
the speech - the lyrics were appropriate
but I'm making a stand,
shotgun loaded
Plagiarism or borrowed language
would defeat the purpose of my
grand manifesto
So where do I start?
I suppose I have already.
I started out hunting Originality,
then Origin. Original Sin, a
singular Clockwork Orange
but there I go again, or rather here,
on my own, dammit I'm doing it
again.
Going it alone did me no good
May as well have been hunting
a snark; but snarkiness exuded
incidentally enough, I went and
cast derision at fluff in which I
could plainly see derivation
derived roots leading to a source
derived from something else
entirely, much older, distorted
down through the ages yet the
same old song
Someone told me that I had a
unique perspective, crediting me
for finding inspiration in unexpected
places.
It was then that I realized the place
I had found a muse (and by which
I had been amused) was nothing more
than a vacant vessel, previously inhabited
by food, but moreover a former source
of creative impulse for another writer
I know - in the interest of Intellectual
Property, I had been a thief, the ghostly
muse appeared more as an echo than
as a resounding original note
A noteworthy offense, the gravy train
to the grave for my poetic voice
Hardly enough food for thought.
My unintentional offense brought me
to build my own defenses, I built a few
fences
after two sentences, I came to my senses
I needed a cabin, and a roof
One single bulb, a typewriter, solitude
Here with the shotgun I make a stand
to defend my little lot of Intellectual
Property
I will die a martyr
While an old bulb dangles like the Hanged Man
But damn I've been stagnant,
damn I've been lonely
They never did come for me
or my Intellectual Property
I was starting to think this whole
idea was pretty dumb
I hadn't written a thing
I really should have brought
a feather duster
for that dusty old typewriter
As I type this
the dust kicks out from the keys
I already threw out my back
holding back a sneeze
It was pleasant surprise when the knock
came on the door one day
I don't get many visitors
Actually I've never had one
Even the one that appeared that day
turned out to be a ghost
If not a ghost, than a figment of
my imagination
But considering my condition
I'm not sure I would be capable of
inventing him
He said no one had ever invented anyone
That plagiarism is necessary
That maybe he invented someone
He didn't make much sense.
He asked if I had a piano in my cabin
Because he wanted to write.
He left his epitaph on my doorstep
Took my egoism when he left
When I came back
The typewriter was shiny
The blues on the record player speakers
spoke to my playfulness so I set to record
the events of the day, the reasons
for my hermitage, leaves had blown
in while I talked to the ghost,
I resolve to dust my broom first thing in
the morning
There's something about those old songs
Stolen, one bluesman to the next
Folk songs too
Americana
The American Dream
The same old song, so old none of
the dozens who claimed credit to any one
of them could possibly have been the
author
Almost as though they had just
risen out of the soil one day,
like a blade of grass in a barren lot
only to proliferate and cross-pollinate
spreading through the land
eventually decaying and swept out to
be kept amongst soil which will rebirth it
Perhaps the origin doesn't matter
What's the origin of matter?
What's the matter with originality,
other than the fact that it may or may not
exist? Of course this cabin doesn't exist
either, neither does the typewriter on which
I'm supposedly composing this, and that
ghost was a figment of my imagination after
all, and my imagination is alive and well
I suppose, so the story goes, the resounding
note of the Big Bang is now supposed to be
a reaction creating the Universe we know
from a pre-existing state of being,
Not the beginning, The Beginning of Being
a figment of Einstein's imagination
which trumped knowledge
But not really, not reality
And here I am, playing a dangerous game again
rolling the dice
babbling like a brook running by a cabin
the ticking of typewriter keys
like a time bomb.
Time to head back,
to get back into the game.
What's mine is mine, may have never
been mine to begin with, if there is
in fact a beginning, I'm begging to
let the games begin, mi casa es tu casa
And my mind is an open book...