during the war they saw          she wore far too much rouge
            airplanes with lots of good materials        and not quite enough clothes
and they want the same things to happen now        — always a sign of despair
                 so they’ve arranged to make things          in a woman
                     things like runways, to put fire          between women and men
             along the sides of the runways          there is no friendship possible
                    to make a wooden hut for          passion, enmity, worship
                      for a man to sit in with          love, but no friendship since
                    two wooden pieces on          a man’s face is
            his head as headphones          his autobiography
                 and bars of bamboo          a woman's face is
                          out like antennas          her work of fiction
               — he's the controller —          he lives the poetry he cannot write
                         and they wait          the others write the poetry
       for the airplanes to land          they dare not realize when
they're doing everything right          what biography lends
     the form is perfect — it looks          to death, a new terror
exactly the way it looked before          all bad poetry springs
                  but it doesn't work          from genuine feeling
                 no airplanes land          and everything popular is wrong


~ From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974 by Richard Feynman and quotes by Oscar Wilde


©2006 by PJ Nights