Poetry's house has rooms for everyone.
Full fathoms five go down its foundations,
Down, down through basement, and sub-basement,
And sub-sub basement,
And on and on as far as you care to count.
And its roof? Half as high as the moon, at least.
Who knows for sure?
Up higher than the birds, of course,
Up beyond eyesight,
Intersecting the angels' Earth Bypass Highway,
Way past blue, way, way into black,
High enough to make Babel Tower itself
Look like a doll thimble some little girl forgot.
The solar winds rattle its windows.
And how wide?
The palace of Catharine the Great,
And Versailles, and The Pyramids (both Egyptian and messo-American),
And the Forbidden City, And the Crystal Cathedral, and the Astrodome,
And the Sambadrome, and every building in Mexico City
Welded all together,
Are a cottage, a shack, an outhouse, a dog house
Compared to Poetry's House.
If you don't believe me,
Come see for yourself.
Walk along any hallway
(The way inside is always open),
And try some of the doors.
There are tiny, bitsy rooms
For tiny, bitsy minds;
And rooms so great and glorious
Only saints and children are allowed.
Slimy, slithery, slinky rooms,
Oily and serpenty,
With green whispers and
Flickering amber eyes
And sweet yellow poisons
You want and don't want all at the same time.
Bright and resolute rooms,
Where you keep on, keep on marching along,
With head held high and singing a song;
We'll carry on, folks,
Fifty miles a day,
Through wind and rain and snow, folks,
And dynamite and pirates and quicksand,
And hurricanes and plate tectonics and exploding asteroids,
For God and Country and The Cause,
And The Flag, of course, The Flag.
There are doorways purple-misted
That fairly reek with sin.
Blue-fumed opium and languorous lilies,
Sweet-covered whispers, their bitterness practically undetectable,
The head down with eyes raised to look at you,
The hair a river on one side.
There are doors that will not let you in.
There are doors that will not let you out,
Inside, the mirrors and voices somehow familiar and somehow strange
And music and sparkling darkness
Send you treading mazy ways,
The walls change and rearrange,
And you find you are not
Where you are.
And, oh, here's a room full of laces and ribbons,
Of roses and violets and hollyhocks and bluebells,
And butterflies, robins and peacocks and cherubs,
More laces and ribbons,
And roses and violets and periwinkles, sweet periwinkles,
And doves carrying laces and ribbons, and bluebirds with lilacs,
And sweet elfin dancers, more ribbons and roses,
And doilies and dewdrops, and snowdrops, and pansies
And sweet lovely maidens in laces who dance
Round the maypoles with ribbons and flowers,
And if you don't stop it, it goes on for hours
And hours and hours.
Then there's the low-down, dirty-dog, rainy Monday
Memphis Carolina New Orleens got it bad room.
Yella dog, railroad shack, hooie a hooie don't wanna go back,
Gotta go back, never, forever, bar room, rickety porch,
Dry-eyed, evil ways, red-kimono, cigarette, whiskey-smelling,
Big-city, pianna-playin, sleepless night, back again,
Small-waisted big shouldered man, evil woman, long fingernails,
Back street, evenin sun, slide guitar, Stetson Hat, lonesome whistle blow
blues.
If you open some doors, you will come upon rhyme.
In some, its ingenious, in others, a crime.
There
are
minimalist
rooms.
And then there are rooms of odd shapes and sizes.
The layout
perpetually
Flips
And
Sur
pri
s
es.
I
Know it's bEcAuSE
of
some
reason
OR
other. If you know what it is,
p
l
e
a
s
e
tell me.
Verses that refuse to rhyme
May jump at you at any old place.
When you open such a door,
You'll find two or three or five.
And then there's nothing you can do
But persevere and see it in a different light.
Some rooms are old, so old,
Their floors are rocks made when Earth's skin was just cooled,
Their walls of wood extinct before there were any eyes to see it.
Before Gilgamesh they were built,
Before Adam wrote his first love song to Eve.
Old as the morning stars singing together;
Old as the wind in the reeds.
Some rooms are so new they lack ceilings or walls,
Just skeleton framework and plenty of noise and dust.
And there are rooms devoted to love.
Love lurks everywhere, in all varieties.
High as an angel's aspirations. Low as a cockroach belly.
Pure as the driven snow used to be.
Poison as a chemical company. BR>
Silly.
Ah, speak to me in verse Spenserian,
Or, at the very least, Shakesperian.
The greatest love for you I'm carryin'
Although the burden's gettin' wearyin.'
Rough strife or joy sublime,
Ecstasy or waste of time.
Love religious, love semi-religious.
Love historical, love fearful, love semi-fearful.
Love theatrical, love comical, love tragical, love magical.
Variety endless as the thing itself.
The hallways wander on and on
With branchings and turnings
Elevators and escalators
Spiderwebby spiral stairs, broad marble flights,
Slippery slimed sewer ladders, clanging fire escapes.
Red-carpeted upward ramps, water slides.
All God's plenty and more, my dears. All God's plenty and more.
But if, after trying as many doors as you like,
You still find nothing to suit,
Feel free to take hammer and nails,
Or honey and vinegar,
Or plaster and lathe,
Or spit and string,
Or ivory and ebony,
Or beaten gold,
Or tissue paper,
Or tears,
Or whatever,
And build your own.
