“Verbatim”
by Melanie Anne Phillips
Have you ever wished
you had something to say
to open the heart
or capture the day.
To dissect the mind
or rally the cause,
but your words come up empty,
like stasis on pause.
So you put up your web site
and type in your Word:
a mouthpiece for Gurus
who want to be herd.
You stamp out a template
and auction your ware
that builds them a stairway
for climbing up air.
You translate their yearnings,
transfigure their Muse,
with a medium message
divine in its use.
Yet a lukewarm reception
devours your spiel,
consumed and digested
by The Zombies of Zeal.
For years you persist
in your nebulous quest
toward a furious sound
of infinite jest.
And you never look back
as your life passes by
to present as reflections
not seen through your eye.
But one day you wake
with a pain in your gut
that your fame is a fake
and your mountain, a rut.
So you fall from the sky
’til your life’s on the level
to lie in your bed
while embracing the Devil.
And you sing with the sirens
a glorious wail,
obscuring the site
of the Visioner’s Grail.
And the auctioneer’s gavel
indentures the Muse
and takes a percentage
of all whom she screws.
But one day She dies,
consumed with the clap,
and Her audience cries
as it lays in your lap.
So you cradle its head,
as it cradles yours,
and you wish you were dead
(save the proceeds from tours.)
But it isn’t the money,
nor is it the fame,
and it never was simply
the name of the game.
And it isn’t the insight
of getting there first,
nor the common law marriage
of better and worst.
You keep scratching your head
’til it coughs up a thought
in the hope it tastes better
than those that you bought.
You savor the flavor
that burns through your tongue,
for Truth leaves you speechless
and breathless and young.
And the answers you sought
with obtuse nomenclature
turn out to be more
of a personal nature.
So the final few words
of this self-focused work
provide answers for me.