Eight: The Dispensing (poetry series)

Posted by ractrose on 22 May 2020 in Art, Poems

Is the person, as such, pleasing

In ways, does the person please, and in ways offend

If the good were scissored free from, we will say, four inferior samplings

Sleeve, bodice, skirt, stitched, with a neat, tooth-to-tooth intermeshing

Of their pinked edging

We should be left to ask, part two, whom does this garment fit

Need it fit?

If so, we do not wish the person to be other than he is

We might pick out the seams, remake him, retaining the idea of the person, but altering

the perception of the idea

He is not to be made out of whole cloth, styled sufficient in autonomy to maintain

unpredictability, as threat or bringer of fortune

Oftentimes, a Tom, a Dick, a Harry

Dressed in anecdote, a player fabricated to beguile

But the mannequin is like a man, he serves, in that he moves and speaks

He speaks, sketched in with crabbing fingers pinched

He moves, made to do right at key points, the audience

Marionette Tom or Dick is elsewise of no use

That he lived contents us

A certificate of birth and a likeness

One or two remembered acts predictive

And if the story is of victory

And if the story is of failure

Let the story be the one at first, and then the other

And when the strawman falls from favor

We may dig from his file a daughter

The Dispensing