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In The Distance
by Philip F De Pinto
In trying to be different
The dog who was already at variance
Became indistinguishable from the rest
In fact their spitting image
Then there was this cat who in trying
To be similar to every other cat
Succeeded only in remaining at variance
Which was to say he remained utterly himself
Despite his best efforts to the contrary
Then there is
The earth
Invariably herself
Still round
And rich
And full of hurt
Kicking up dirt
Over which
Luna is risen
And Helios is set
On suffering around
The cornering
The market
Meanwhile in the distance:
This
Was all new
To you
To them too
You're being born
In the distance
In the same instance
That a piece of paper in the fore is
Folded neatly in two
Or whether it was torn
To shreds is still in dispute
As is the day or night we hopped on each others freight
Which I should say was the only time you ever got anywhere
When we were laying in our hammock and you hopped
Your freight on my night train
And I took you as far as any femme hobo has a right to go
Every other vehicle, that made an attempt to move you, i.e. every car, every cab,
Every truck, every train, every plane, every roller skate or board,
In fact, every emotional flume you ever hailed,
Failed to get out of the starting gate and were only managing
To spin their wheels, and the lady liberty, i.e. the freedom,
The whore, you adored and worshiped so much
Was only a coquette teaser, who permitted you only to cop a feel
And nothing more, enough to engage your gears, then as quickly disengage.
To reiterate, I say the only time you had movement or freedom of any kind
Was when you hopped your freight on mine. When I took you on as fare.
The same goes for me, in that I never had such an abundance of freedom or managed
To get anywhere, as when you took me on your night train.
And in the case you were asking,
It is Thursday.
Matters not the week, the month, the year,
And Streisand is singing, People.
Who she says, I need. And I don't disagree.
I do need people. All sorts of people, including those
Who keep telling or insisting that I look on the bright side.
Do not, do not, they repeat, do not go gentle or otherwise in that good night
Or bad or indifferent. People, I suspect, for their looking on the bright side
Have something of the despot or demonic to hide within such.
As they could never conceal in the dark,
To whom I would say, if the moon or I
Had no side but the bright, we'd both be flat.
And that would be that.
Except that, that, wouldn't be that for me.
As I need to consider looking on the dark side too
And all the neat stuff in between the two
Equally beautiful, equally valid
Lastly I wish to say
I am sick
Of being prolific
Not gravely ill, mind you,
Just plain sick of this neat
And over abundant trick,
You played on me,
And continue to play.
You say
You are sick too,
Of this over abundant trick
That you play on me
Over and over,
But what can we do,
But be sick,
Not gravely ill,
Of this neat and over abundant trick
You play on me
Called being prolific
But what I really want to say lastly is:
What you call art.
I call making shit up.
Like I made you up
Or you made me.
Was the art we had, art
Or making shit up?
For sure, we had our start,
As well, our finish.
The latter you imposed on me.
Evicted me from the weave,
So to speak.
And when you were finished with me,
You called it art. Even put down your signature.
I call it, a put down and unfinished,
And making shit up,
And not meriting a signature.
You made an art of coming
Into my life and then evacuating. i.e.
Abandoning the project in mid stream, so to speak.
You said our growing apart was art.
I call it making shit up.
Cause all the while the chicken little
In you was saying
Our sky was falling,
You were making shit up, even down.
Cause I never felt so utterly intact, with you
And the sky was never bluer
Or more secure.
Given the flying buttresses,
Of our art,
How could it not?
Yeah!
You claimed we were falling apart
And you would call such falling apart, art.
I call it lacking the high heart
To stick to the art we were,
Which was found. Yes,
Most indubitably, yes! The art we had
Was found art.
And what a stroke of fine luck, in that,
Some failed artist or other
Tossed their failures in the heap.
Some of which I found down the street somewhere.
Some of which you found in some other trash bin further down.
And we took advantage
And conglomerated and turned this failure around
And became rich, rich, abundantly rich
In making and discovering the art as we had in each other.
And we did make a fine art of such.
Which you call making shit up.
To reiterate.
The only honest to goodness and solid and steadfast art there is,
Is found art, which is a lost art
All other art is bullshit!
Untrue and in transience
05/02/2014 Posted on 05/02/2014
Copyright © 2024 Philip F De Pinto
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 05/03/14 at 02:33 AM Oh the passion and the furry contained in these lines! Excellent rant, Phil. A tidal wave of words and drama, on par with Shakespeare. I’ve always contended that anything longer than a (paper) page is an epic. I think this one safely passes the smell test. |
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