A Song For The Common Man

A Song For The Common Man

Boring isn't beautiful, but Keats

Seemed to think it made good poetry.

Shakespeare isn't beautiful or boring,

But human, deep and commonplace, like men.

Everyone has inspiration in him

If it isn't smothered by the tide

Of his parents sweeping over him

At birth, the bud pinched quickly from the stem.

No fancy words. No fancy thoughts. No music,

Perhaps the most egregious sin of all.

It's better, and the neighborhood agrees,

To die a philistine than live a faggot.

To join a gang and murder in the streets.

But if the severed bud takes root and grows

In some soil and blossoms unawares,

Another Shakespeare may be in the offing.

Never! Every seven thousand years.

Well forgotten. Yet new poetry.

The simplest poet simply tells the soul.

If crossed with madness, sickness intervenes,

The verse may be both beautiful and strange,

And still bear truths that suit the common man.

Everybody is a common man.

2-27-14