A plan to beguile it was, maybe
maybe not. A plan to amuse it was, maybe
maybe not. But here I tell you the story
as it had happened: as it happens,
the designer made a room, unique and aloof
in a dark jungle of no matter, and
to fool the foolish he called out aloud –
this is where there will be life.
He painted it blue on the outside,
all eight walls and even the doors, impassable.
Through fate, or through courage
through sin, or through discipline
through whichever gate we use to enter,
the room is empty, the room is green.
Fools bang their heads on the walls, fools make merry
but some fools become poets and start to worry
about the emptiness, about the room,
about the green and the persistent gloom.
Some poets remain fools and lament in the green room,
others find a switch, very green – it lies concealed,
and some poets remain fools and turn it on,
while other poets just let it be,
and poets that day they cease to be
in their green room of gloom.
He is a poet who, foolishly, found the switch.
Then foolishly, he turned it on.
Howls abound, the room was red,
a brazen bloody picture of dread.
But between the colours he could see,
the room was the same per se,
the same fools making merry,
the same fools banging their heads on the walls,
the same poets lamenting foolishly
and the same foolish poets searching needlessly.
Green gloom, red dread, or blue bloom,
oh how he wished he could write a poem
and tell others what he’d seen
till it dawned on him a poem like he had in mind
he once had seen…
Why I Never Lived, and why I always lied 