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Poetry | Art | Philosophy |
Somewhere there's a shrine serene
for every prep and jock and queen
who fades into a wrinkled past.
Get real, folks; good looks don't last.
For every cent that they invested
to stay sharply dressed and smartly vested,
for every name that's on their collars,
Medicare will tax ten dollars;
smeared wrinkle cream quickly replaces
tasteful makeup on their faces;
their weight will double, smiles fade
for every preppie baby made;
they'll chafe from painful scars of strife
left by the Brillo pad of life,
so different then from what they dreamed
when superficial beauty beamed.
So somewhere, surely, a shrine awaits
all these preppie invertebrates,
a memorial to their loss sublime
of looks and fashions, over time.
Once upon a fictitious era
lived the goddesses Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera,
who wanted this apple, but just couldn't get it --
so like most Greek gods did, they squabbled, then bet that
this princeling, one Paris, with sight claimed acute
would prefer one femme's features and end their dispute.
Athena bribed him with wisdom, and Hera a throne,
but Aphrodite, she promised a girl all his own.
But the love Paris chose was Queen Helen of Troy --
which was bound to cause problems, since she HAD a boy.
Well, there was nothing for it then but terrible war,
since Helen's first husband thought to even the score,
so after God knows how many pages great Achilles, who'd been dunked as a kid,
got a spear in his heel and fell inexplicably dead.
There were other neat heroes, whose names I've forgot --
like this Agamem-something, a king and a sot --
and Ulysses, the guy in Homer's other poem
who won the war for Menelaus but had trouble getting ho-em.
Anyway, thanks to this damn contest, Paris never got his wife,
but lost his city, his closest friends, his family and his life --
and no-one knows what happened to the apple, and it's likely that we won't,
which leads to the following moral (aside from Beware of Greeks Bearing Large and Obviously Hollow Wooden Animals into Your City if You're at War with Them):
if three goddesses should appear in a field and ask you to decide which is fairest, don't.
I got my diaper and my bottle
and I'm learning how to toddle away;
I can gurgle sixteen letters
and my bladder's getting better each day;
I got a brand new fuzzy teddy and
when we snuggle up in bed we both say,
every day:
Oh, baby
(ooh aby daby) (gooh aby daby) (goo goo),
we do the newborn baby boogie.
(goo goo) (gooh) (gooh)
I only got twenty years to learn the varsity drag,
but for now I get the spotlight with a cool crying jag.
(ooh ooh aby daby) (gooh aby daby) (goo goo)
We do the newborn baby boogie.
(goo goo) (gooh) (gooh)
I got all my fingers and I got all my toes,
and I got some things I can't use yet but I'll figure out those.
I got a woman here who feeds me
and who says she really needs me around;
I got a room with cool wallpaper
of rhinoceri and capering clowns --
but there's simply nothing finer
than this catchy forty-liner I sing:
I may not know how to speak yet,
but you've got to take a peek at how I swing.
Wow, I swing. Take it, Teddy.
[Improv. sax solo: lots of waah-waah]
And I tell ya, baby
(ooh aby daby) (gooh aby daby) (goo goo),
I do the newborn baby boogie.
(goo goo) (wooh) (gooh)
If you see me standing up, please just don't knock me down;
I'm getting old enough now to be getting around.
There's a flat stretch of floor there, and nowhere to fall --
and I sure as hell ain't gonna wait to learn how to crawl.
(waaaah--goo aby daby) (gooh aby daby) (goo goo)
I do the newborn baby boogie.
(goo goo) (gooh) (gooh)
I simply got no reason to be singing da blues
'til I gotta go to preschool and start tying my shoes.
[Improv. to end]
Woah, Mama, don't you burp me now.
I am not a rockin' Robin;
I can't be a merry man;
I don't plan on riding shotgun
all the way to Disneyland.
I am no-one's faithful Tonto;
I'm no-one's Laurel to their Hardy;
I hate that when they play strip poker
I'm not welcome at those parties.
I'm so tired of being Vulcan
stationed on a Bird of Prey;
I never got a chance to learn
how to be cool -- so when did they?
I've faced all my plotlines with two thousand plans
but I'm still not quite sure who am I;
I'm yet not the what which I never could be,
and it's always too much that I'll try
(which I think would be fine if I wasn't this man;
I'm not certain I'm good as a me.)
Life is just a game of chess --
we're all pawns who try to mate --
and it's too big to sort out the mess
(there's 64 in 8 by 8).
The queens are domineering;
the kings are stuck at home;
the bishops are god-fearing;
the rooks have hearts of stone;
the knights put on a show of force,
of bravery and noble pride,
but really it's machined, of course:
two steps forward, one aside.
And all we pawns, heads rounded,
drudge slowly ahead, devoted
to some sacrifice supremely founded --
until row eight, where we're promoted.
We labor in the fields of Nurn,
bent double, seeding the twisted dusty rows
with wheat (though other things will grow,
but are not called for) for sour bread
we will never taste, and in turn
the men we feed do not keep the heads
they give for Him. We cannot see
with His sight, do not have His eye
for plans, we know, so don't ask why
our children march or we still bend --
and never will, not 'til our midnight sea
comes drowning crown and fields at the end.
Oh, when first I met you
I knew you were doomed to pain,
for though your crumpled snout cried love,
your chest we'd cleave in twain.
With scalpel and with busy probe
we sliced your heart in two,
forgetting all our former friendship
to dissect your former you.
What hopes had you for love or fame
whilst you were in the womb?
What piggy dreams of Broadway
were in plastic box entombed?
Though I know you cannot hear me --
O fondest pork, I wish you could --
what piggy dreams have dreamed in vain
so we might study blood?
Oh, golly gee, I just love love --
I guess I'm just a philephile --
since poets thrive on sappy rhymes
and colored hearts and heartfelt trials.
Without love, the human race
would be very rare, indeed --
but rarer still would poets be
without that hyperbolic need.
After all, what other topic
lends itself to such fluency --
and without love to write about,
where would all we poets be?
Unrhymed verse, so meditative;
rhyming songs, gurgling briskly;
sad or joyous, over-contemplative;
or else singsong, and slightly sickly.
So, golly gee, I just love love --
and I'm being serious; Lord knows it's true:
without love to fall in and out of,
what else would poets do?