Remove the Head
#7 of Poetry
Beheadings have a mythical context--but what do they mean for modern society? News at 11!
Remove the head, and what is left? A pile of blood and scales and bone All crumpled down into a heap beneath the sun-- Oh great Saint that saves us! Illustrious in design, ye mighty with a sword And helpful with shield and steed. A slice, a crack, and dead dragon lies As many creatures fore and aft.
Remove the head, and what is left? A cry forever echoing through leaves, A blade now stained with blood undeserv'd From a creature who had not instigated. Snicker-snack, indeed, fair boy Who ran headlong into the wood To prove his father's cry unjust And in its stead a death now perpetrated, Letting the Tum-Tum feed upon its form.
Remove the head, and what is left? As preacher says to flock at dawn, "These deadly sins, you shall not take Into your vocabulary, not by me!" And we do nod and agree in word, But then in deed we transgress entire-- Until we find our backs on brick And see the truth in callous coldness, But that our victim, left to cogitate Inside a cardboard moving crate Is now but a fable for our detective intrepid.
Remove the head, and what is left? A sweating pile of secret desires, All wet from running hither, yon, With limbs akimbo, running contrails Like so many planes of peacock ilk-- These beings inside beings borne Of imagination and loneliness; Of something more than what we're given, This emotional upholstery that swaddles those Who then embrace the world at large With all the love they may not show, But in these suits of sutured fur They kiss the dawn and praise the moon.
Remove the head, and what is left? Something much more potent.