untitled reprise

Alan P. Scott - Verses

untitled - untitled reprise - untitled iii


MacArthurian,
I return
Hardly victorious,
but at least better able
to think than yesterday.
I think

Therefore, I am?
solopsist;
sloppy solipsist. At least
qualify.
You don't even know that you think.
Do you?

I heard you. You said,
"I think I do."
What a cop-out!
Trying to evade an answer
with finely-turned phrases
(But isn't that the poet's art?)
You won't escape so easily, let me tell you.

You realize, of course, that statistically
You don't exist.
Of course,
statistically this message
(?)
doesn't exist either, so
you might as well ignore it.

I had a dream the other night.
I dreamed
that a fish with the head of a man
came out of the sea
and talked to me
of the joys of living in ooze
and eternal dark.
He sounded like he really enjoyed it.
(No, I don't know that he was a he;
I don't go around looking at fish's
naughty bits.
Especially talking fish.
He had the head of a man, but it
could have been a woman with short hair.
His voice?
I defy anyone to tell sex from a sound
like a strangled herring.)
Ah what the hell.

Anyway, he started me thinking.
What makes our life up here so much better?
Sure, he doesn't have TV
but who wants it?
He doesn't have cars (or air pollution,
Except that which Man gifts him with)
or computers (but no need, either).
The only thing I think I'd miss
is sex.
Fish sex is dull, he told me.
(No, I don't know that for sure, either,
never having tried it.)

It's always fun to screw up.
I know.

Foibles. What a fun word.
related to folly.
The prime topic of man's research
For thousands of years.

God, I'm starting to sound
like one of those damned
"back to nature" freaks
with their electric typewriters
mixers guitars dishwashers tvs
cassette players stereos, their
cars motorcycles vans ten-speeds
roller skates
Their chrome-plated fuel-injected
Four-barrel carb life.
They want to get back to nature?
Back to such fun pastimes as
diptheria polio whooping cough cholera
typhoid measles forgodssake influenza?
Death in childbirth as common as life?
Life stopping at dusk
at the mercy of every wild animal with a hunger
for long pig?
Including other men?
It makes me want to puke. These puny souls
couldn't even stand the real Nature
the one we can only reach with (gasp!)
technology:
the stars.
That's where the life is.
Imagine a whole planet
never before touched by human feet.
Green and golden in the sun.
Imagine men walking on it
Making it their own.
Doesn't it make you want to sing out, "Yes!"
And go along?

Ah me.
As the French say,
(although not in English),
such is life.

Depressing, ain't it?

I am trying to create a dream
out of whole cloth
(What's part cloth, anyway

Serendipity, man; that's what it's all about

?)
We have been borrowing on our balance of dreams
For many years now,
and the principal principle
is about exhausted.
Look at modern "lit" if you don't believe me.


The "untitled" cycle received 1st prize for poetry in Marshall University's Academic Festival on April 4, 1981.


©1980, 2007 Alan P. Scott. All rights reserved.

Last updated January 28, 2007

Contact me:

ascott@pacifier.com