II: The Mad Muses of Sad Cracked Jack#
Part I - Thalia
The question beggars even now
For answers we still lack.
No one has ever said the how
Of what that cracked our Jack.
He woke that day and heard the song
That framed his steps with beat,
The meter stick that smacked along
Behind his fuzzled feet.
At first he thought he dreamt the verse,
These words you read unfold.
But when he thinks the thoughts recurse
And seep through pages’ mould.
Aghast he jolts and cries aloud,
“What trickster plays these tricks?”
Then shocked to find his speech endowed
with stresses timed to ticks.
Alas, if Jack had only known
the furies fate had loosed–
“What furies now?” His groan
reply to rhymes reduced.
What fatal flaw entrapped this man?
“I’m just an office clerk!”
But forces orchestrate a plan
no human born can shirk.
In boxer briefs, he stumbles out,
Escapes from bed to hall,
And every inch he runs to rout
The rhythm’s faster call.
In morning light, the very sight
Of frantic Jack alerts
The neighborhood to pending blight
Of curse this line asserts.
“Oh, neighbors, please, receive my plea!
There’s something very wrong!”
He cries with gasp from bended knee,
“I only speak in song!”
A single friend then steps on stage,
So named to fit the bill,
For names are fate and fettered wage,
They called her lovely Jill.
“Jack? What the hell is going on? Are you okay?”
At that our Jack is taken back,
Her voice as clear as glass
With not a hint of verse to track
Through mazes long and crass.
“How can it be!? An ask so free
While I to scheme conform!”
His diction sweeps anastrophe,
Mosaics teeming swarm.
She kneels to him and whispers soft,
A voice as kind as cane,
The type that beats, not sweet but loft
To strike the skin with pain.
“Are you on drugs or something else?”
Now Jill, this dame, the missus made
To fill the damsel role,
The unsuspecting victim played
To ballad’s very goal.
These words are met with wide-eyed stare
As Jack realized his plight;
He hears the lines designs prepare,
the ending rhymes invite.
“Oh, listen, Jill, and listen well!”
He takes her hand in his,
“These words that flow are not a spell,
They simply are what is!
“I hear the force that cracks the shape
incessant stresses bind!”
He cries as crowds surround to gape
at madness here enshrined.
“I see,” She nods, but doesn’t see,
and picks him up to walk,
“Perhaps,” She says, “It’s time to flee,”
and hauls our Jack in shock.
By hand he’s led while thoughts digress,
absurdity in tow.
And spanned by doubt the thoughts obsess
unheard except through flow.
As doors are slammed, the cats are scrammed
from cushions where they sat,
And leaning in as Jill enjambed,
“We need to have a chat
About the–fact–” she stops mid-sound,
and measures out her tone,
as slowly wound on axis bound,
her speech is ground and thrown,
“About the fact you seem irate,”
She says while tongue contorts
Around retorts that resonate
with words this verse consorts,
“And not to mention halfway nude,”
She says with glance that proved,
“Let’s find you something more subdued,”
But Jack cannot be moved.
“Why do you rhyme? You’re part of it!”
In anger, Jack explodes.
“This horrid crime,” His words are spit,
“Explain what fate unloads!”
Beneath her brow, her eyes express
concern through gems of blue,
“You’re clearly broken by some stress,
Now tell it to me true!”
Attacked by cackles, Jack, he laughs,
“Yes! Stress! The very pest!
The force that binds these epigraphs
And leaves me most distressed!”
“Your speech is weird and most perturbed,”
Her tone now wavers weak,
“The implication is disturbed,”
As rhymes begin to leak.
“Disturbed is just the word I’d pick
describing my disease.
It strickens me a lunatic
and swings me by trapeze.
Despair becomes the one sole choice,”
Laments a weary Jack,
“Unfairly drummed by cunning voice,
alone and left to crack.”
This lonely lack, unpacked by Jill,
now spurs her senseless heart,
“Oh Jack, what’s wrong? For me distill
what ails your world through art?”
Oh Jack, Oh Jack, this foolish track
Will lead to Jill’s demise.
By now he knows, there’s no way back,
But still defiant sighs,
“I woke today and found the world
explained by verse unheard
By anyone but me,” Unfurled
his words to heights absurd.
Confusion swirls her face anew,
perplexing facts askew,
“And does it speak of me and you?
What ends that might ensue?”
“It does! It says that you are next,
that fate has bound our names,
If cursed I am, then curse has vexed
us both to play its games.”
“If that’s the case, then if I play–”
She pauses, lost in thought,
“It’s hard to pick a word to say–”
And thoughtless finds the spot.
And now the players number two,
For two the game is made.
And now the stacks they anted grew
Against the pair they played.
A pairing told in pages’ fold
of arcs that never miss–
Her voice remarks through mutters rolled,
“–the flying fuck is this?”
“You hear it too?” As shocked as she,
“The lyric ghost that haunts
our wretched lives with prophecy,
As if their words are taunts?”
A beat, then two, she hears it too,
But heard is not the word
An ear would say, this residue
inferred through meaning blurred,
“Juh–Jack,” She hacks, “Is this a joke?”
But jokes are soaked in mirth;
This line will punch, though falling stroke
will bury dead in Earth.
She asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs, “Your guess is mine.”
“Is this–” her stutter opaline,
intoned benign, “–a sign?”
A sign, of course, but pointing where?
Aligned to what or who?
The human mind, a dull affair,
So apt to misconstrue.
The secret sunk in guarded chest
Of synchronicity
Is found in warps of arcs possessed
Of eccentricity.
And even as these words are sewn,
and in their heads unstitched,
she threads the fraying edges shown
and falls enthralled bewitched
As lighting up, a dawning norm,
recalled from days of youth,
There Jill exclaims, “So uniform,
I’ve heard before in truth!
This meter fits a ballad sung
in feet of four and three!”
And springing up, his hands are wrung,
“What’s that to you and me?”
“It’s hard to say, but what is clear,
There’s meaning here conceived,”
Declared in certain words austere,
one almost dare believed.
“This useless English Arts degree
I never thought to use,
It’s purpose clear, we both agree,
Was always to deduce
The curse of verse that flirts with us
And save us from its worst
But first I need the tools to suss
The course to be reversed,”
Abrupt she stands with coat in hand,
“The library!” She cries,
“We need some Keats, that Ginsberg banned,
The lessons they advise!”
The lights resurge behind Jack’s eyes,
as hopeless purged, he rants,
“Our paths converge and plans revise,
But first I need some pants!”
Interlude - Chorus
And now, we pause and ask the point,
The one you’ve surely sought
As Jack met Jill at story’s joint,
Recalling what was taught:
That hills and crowns will meet in fall
and Jack will crack his head,
While Jill will follow fast in thrall
and wind up very dead.
A million monkeys strapped approach
The works of bards in time,
A sonnet thus beyond reproach
Returned from carriage chime.
A trillion atoms bound through force
Will likewise fill a void;
For given time, all lines outsource
To stories once enjoyed.
Did verse annoint this story first,
Or simply find a way
To organize the parts dispersed
Through space’s disarray?
Or simpler yet, had Jack just snapped,
insane beyond repair?
The razor tip that Occam tapped
declared the latter fair.
The structure seethes, a wreath of webs
Where meaning sticks to die,
The mind entwined will find in ebbs
The flow that strings the why.
This thread is laid through curling maze,
Convincing paths deceive
That reason’s plan has drawn the ways
But madness hides in weave.
With morning socks arrayed with boots,
Rotated masks arranged,
The tragic interchanged through chutes,
With comedy estranged.
Part II - Melpomene
Oh, Jack and Jill, with ending near,
Their senseless plan persists
To seek in vain a meaning here,
Expecting clever twists.
To top of winding hill they sprint
As quick as line intends
To reach its final point in print,
Arriving as it ends.
They stand before the gothic doors
Where orphaned books are starved
And strewn from shelf to laquered floors
Between the columns carved.
The empty halls where spirits lurk,
The circles Virgil strode,
This minstrel mime and office clerk,
Inside they walk tiptoed.
Abandoned once now long ago,
This library of graves
In grotto grown from pages’ glow
The poet dream enslaves.
They chart their way through ruined scraps,
Remainders shunt by rules,
Debunked accounts and dated maps,
the artifacts of fools.
“What are we seeking?” Jack inquires
as dusting off a tome,
he wonders if this book conspires
with verse’s metronome.
“The story knows we’re on to it,”
her smugly spout reply,
“A growing sense we must commit
before all goes awry.
These straits were mapped in ages past,
And nothing new has sprung
Since Pirandello once surpassed
This awful ballad sung.
Each story trails a trodden path,
reframes an archetype,
we merely need the formal math
to tame this arcing tripe.”
Her fingers flutter index cards,
melodically raced.
The distance trekked in cubic yards,
methodically paced.
“The details differ case to case,”
her theory now unveiled,
“But always author’s page we chase.”
And always thus derailed.
She laughs, “And now afraid of us,
resorts to tired jokes.”
As if these words superfluous,
and not what fate provokes.
A vein of fear, pulsations queer,
These systems Jill concocts
Though seeming true and most sincere,
her madness here unlocks.
“But Jill,” The hapless Jack reacts,
“Perhaps we’re crazed and sick,
And in a loop that interacts
with spirals spinning quick.”
“Just listen close to words you choose,
And note their stilted place.
The forms we fit while sense eschews,
this verse our thoughts deface.
(… in progress …)
The spores of time in yellow mold,
that sprout beneath the thumbs,
They cling to ink and hopeful hold,
as dust each page becomes.
(… in progress …)
These thoughts that think are synced in flocks
Then shorn like woolen coats
By level blade through snow-white locks
Until the sheep are goats.
(… in progress …)
But what are words? The question stands
In empty shelves replete
With rows of books, the operands
Of signs through time repeat.
So Jill, she climbs as ladders creak
With helpless Jack agape,
As antique wheels on railing squeak
And speak with tongues that scrape.
“It must be here!” Declaring loud,
She plucks a grimoire loose,
And in her pride, her voice so proud,
“I’ve found our Mother Goose!”
But gravity now overtook
As fingers lose their grip
She shifts to catching the falling book
And heedless starts to slip.
( … in progress … )
They sought to know, but knowing lied,
Unknown to them its ends
That brought to sow the death she died,
A body Jack now tends.
(… in progress …)
June 2025