On Pith and the Decay of Meaning Demeaned
(1) Oh! It seems to me a loss That rich words reduce to ritzy rubble, To witticisms which hardly score The rinds of subjects. That pithiness Evolved is a joke, And not the secret in the darkened center Of the comment. It hollows itself Into safari helmets for civilians and officers, Into trapping which entraps wearers With too much implication, withholding Humaner aspects of culling.
(2) I hope these invectives remain embedded in your psychic fingertips like bee-stings. Deadly recluses waiting to remind That meaning is meaning till it ceases To retrieve from memory’s vault Any amount of image or coin.
(3) If I recycle sounds overheard, Am I a naive mockingbird? Or do I inject fresh life into Sound’s passage? I suppose caution Must be advised. To avoid The rusty, reused needles of yesterday. That musty old fogey language then Is just as alive in his musty cabin. Twirling, chewing his unshaveness. Cackling Long into the night. He sits on his porch And sings Aloo Alay Aloo Alay Allonze. Go with him, The immortal has no reason to deceive.
(4) I can see most words and know them Pressed up against the light As under a microscope. All their curves, Ascensions, ancestors, acquaintances. What though, of the friendly arms They link with neighbors in a march Down main streets and pages and screens.
(5) Who can remember d’Artagnan When dark chocolate’s fragrance Hangs in the air?
(6) Beneath botanics and vascular tissues, The magnolia trees hoard their flowers From wintry climes. How selfishness Manifests from insentience. And how It incenses deprived senses.
(7) The editor acts the part, Performs the glee slaughter of words To access the center and tenet Of text which hides its pith, Both naughty and noble from the sun.
(8) I wear the pith helmet, Spitting commands and psalms. From beneath intoxicating romance, The whole colony arrives. From beneath the dirt, brigades raze Every indigenous creation raised Since Government House went dark. My eyes alight when the height Of any civilization Walks ashore once more.
(9) To wear the pith is to be ensconced, In a world already toppled. Adrift on the ocean at night, Transcribing the mind into diaries Soon to be tossed overboard. No locomotion besides the steady beat Of drums’ low rut-tut-rut rut-tut-rut. The aura of ghost worlds given life. And who wants that? “You bear a striking resemblance To your grandfather.”
(10) And so I hollow out my skull To rid myself these transgressions. I pith myself, for only the mind Droops for possible victory.
