Yes, they were poetry-mad; they writhed and seized with
poetry; they were engorged with it, so much so that the blood spurted from
their veins, soaked into their shirts, and finally drenched the street. Had they
known it would happen? Had they, leaving their well-appointed houses in the
morning, been especially careful to bid farewell to their parents? Did they
realize that life would never again return to the measured pace of their
days—the computer games, Facebook, Instogram and the like?
No, forever forward they would lurch through streets—seeking
rhyme and meter, craving enjambment and anapests, lusting for trochees and
spondees. Eating, sleeping, drinking—all those would be forgotten, so inflamed
had their brains become, so maddened had their blood boiled. Now they lived
only for poetry, and rolled in ecstasy on the floor as the verses poured over
them. Their tongues hung out of their mouths, their eyes were glazed, they
shrieked in horror when rational-minded scientists opened physics texts in
front of them. Would they be lured? Never, so drunken they! They cavorted with
the spirits of the ancients, seduced songs from stones, lured monsters into the
caresses of mermaids until they grew docile and happy. They could speak in
nothing but metaphor—extended or otherwise—and simile was the sunbeam turning the
dew into diamonds on a crimson rose.
Their parents, horrified, demanded to know what had been
done, what maleficent force had poisoned their children, the young who had been
destined to become lawyers, doctors, even—gasp—accountants. But now there was
nothing; their brains had become sated, rabid with poetry. No facts could
intrude; differential equations were left to stroll on the beach; the muses of
geology and biology were sent to wander through bamboo groves, escorted by the
shrieking macaws above.
The high priestess stands before them—her long white skirt
reminiscent of the toga that graced Sappho. Yes, twice-Lady arises, more
luminescent that the moon that shone on Juliet, more intoxicating than the mead
that spurred Beowulf, more riotous than the wine that led Homer across every
crest of the Aegean.
Yeats, Shakespeare, Ella Wheeler Wilcox—no words whatever
from whatever quill, be they great or lowly, exalted or piffling—they devoured
them all. And never were they sated—rather, they craved more as the hours
passed, as the days lengthened into weeks, as the centuries grew into eons that
flung greetings to the dinosaurs dancing quadrilles among the cycads.
One imagined herself Maud Gonne, another became Beatrice
seeking her Petrarch in streets where the whispers of the poet still echoed,
Dark Ladies abounded and grew jealous of each, hurling murderous glares that
became javelins tossed by expert minor gods towards every devil. The history
books of all the world drained their statesmen, prime ministers, kings and
queens down glutted cesspools; greater, nobler figures shone in the newly
glistening pages. Lancelot and Guinevere were subjected to scholarly exegesis;
their blood was drawn and their DNA mapped, to be of use for generations
spawning into infinity. The Wife of Bath was appreciated as the spiritual
forerunner of the Beat generation; Robert Herrick became the physic that
doctors dosed to crotchety invalids. Babies were nursed on amontillado as Poe
pulsed into their ears; they grew tired and tall—twenty feet or more daily—so
nourishing and salubrious were the words.
The earth decided, on a whim, to leave its tired orbit and
dance for a bit by itself a little nearer the sun—in those places subject to
frost—or a bit further away. The other planets soon followed, and the pleasures
of an English ball, as envisioned by Jane Austen, were enjoyed by all.
The toy Chihuahua, Federico García Lorca, sprang from lap to
lap, nibbling on morsels of Dickinson, Yeats, Emerson. At last, Walt Whitman
drove him into a frenzy until he could bear no more, and collapsed into a deep
sleep. A sleep so deep that he snored not, but rather murmured stanzas of
Leaves of Grass.
Those leaves of grass became the flesh of which sang the
prophet Peter. The leaves of grass became the lawn on which Alice sat, as she
contemplated plunging down the rabbit hole. The leaves of grass became the
towering forests through which glided Indians tossed from Fennimore Cooper’s
pen: deer, enchanted by and beyond words, lay down and instantly became
venison.
Serene and glowing, the twice-lady priestess drifted through
throngs of the enthralled; she lifted her arms and showers of diamond iambs and
dactyls illuminated the sky. The greatest of fireworks were as guttering
matches in a dank cave, hideously besotted with guano, next to the glory, the
munificence that she showered upon the acolytes. She was revered venerated more
than the Blessed Virgin, who grew pouty and teary, slunk into a corner, and
plotted machinations of revenge against her. The twice-Lady merely smiled.
It was not an afternoon: it was that moment when the cosmic
winds stir, meet each other, and dance life and creation into being. Once
lulled, once seduced by the siren, the never-to-be-the-same boarded their
buses, knowing that at any moment they could become chariots, spiriting past
the galaxies they had blessed.
(What else could I write when 90 teenagers came into the cafe for a poetry slam?)
