Original Poem: "Travels with Charlie"
I
“Wand’ring off that righteous road,
I woke within wooded woe
Dark and deep, so wicked wild
Mem’ry moved by Mercy Mild
Must, tripping, tread tragic roots,
Recollecting fallen fruits.”
Spake the fearful Florentine,
Freed from earthly quarantine
To tour the filthy, foul, and fell,
Reeking, wretched rings of Hell;
Face the Beast, behold detritus
On the banks of cold Cocytus,
Then, returning, sketch the story
Dei dannati peccatori
Bled below those cozy, christened,
Perfect purged who prayed and listened
When the prophets broke the news
Of one hundred ways to lose
God’s great game; that sick perversion;
Petty, pain-filled, doomed diversion
Funneling the fates of fools
Pinned upon prenatal rules
(Antiquated, false, archaic,
Silly, small, and Ptolemaic)
Into two eternities;
Dual faith-based fraternities;
Unbaptized and ancient lost,
Cursed by one they never crossed,
Limbo ‘neath the Gates of Heaven,
Snakebit ‘side those deadly seven
Sinners whose depravities,
Cumbrous mental cavities,
Crippling, caustic, cruel compulsions,
Creeping, costly, tool revulsions
Toward their massive mystic mirror;
See your good creator clearer
For the bar’brous beast he be;
Gather ‘round and listen me
Say you need no mock messiah,
Jeane, John Frum, or Jeremiah,
Promise or prognostication
Hindering appreciation;
All our lives, so fickle, fleeting,
Precede no postmortem meeting,
Revelry or grand reunion,
Justice, judgment, nor communion;
Only chemical reaction;
Dreary, dreamless putrefaction.
II
Mark my black oblivion
Not with tack, obsidian,
Fading flower, myth or marble,
Wasted hour, weeping warble,
Tired, tribal, timeworn text;
Stubborn, steadfast, ev'dence vexed,
Crazed account of Kingdom Come;
Sell your sinking stock in some
Long-stale scripture; face the facts;
Pay no mind, fine, tithe, or tax
In my honor, tribute, name;
Feed not father's phantom flame.
I’ll be damned if I let time,
Credence counter reason, rhyme,
Crease my calm or cloud cognition,
Suffer stifling superstition,
Crowd the cult of Dionysus,
Wait for wealth, health, midlife crisis,
Lethal leave or blazing bramble;
Now’s the age to write and ramble.
III
Though I place no pious plea,
Ask no muses sing in me,
See no coarse, iconoclastic
Book-burning enthusiastic
Classic killer; I would never
Wish nor hope we ever sever
Ties to tales of brave Ulysses;
Pallid Pilgrim, don’t dismiss these
Sweeping sagas, epic tales;
Exodus and wind-swept sails,
Wizards, wyverns, weapons, wars,
Peaces, feasts on foreign shores,
Magical, made-up, mistaken,
Yield yet virtue when they waken
Conversation, independence,
Inspiration; true transcendence
Via verse, libretto, lyric;
Lasting, noble, non-empiric
Valu’ble; resolve, conviction;
I’ve not lost all faith in fiction;
Yet construct no chronicle;
Terrors tiered and conical,
Fevered feats of proud immortals,
Lie not past my partial portals.
I’m no passive saint or sage,
Make no mask of pen or page;
Read instead, a portrait peek,
At our world, so bluish, bleak,
Bright in ticklish alternation,
Triumph, challenge, altercation,
Beauty too; don’t you worry,
Hesitate; just hasten, hurry;
Go and grasp it; stir, you seeker,
Lucky, lit’rate English-speaker;
Sub no second-hand perspectives;
Take not simple, safe electives;
Fire canons; try your hands,
Wits in extralocal lands;
Always run and never hide;
Be your own free, godless guide.