Scott Joplin Scores Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" in Five Acts (MLA Format)

tiring of trying
the yellow moon rising
over that delirious desert
where the dead
lay down

on a piano bench reposed
a song of swords and the rose
and though you try
you can't recall the tune

all your colors they have faded
this song is dissonant and jaded
so share a drink
with all the hanged
and the drowned

your polished silver mask?
you know, you sold it for a flask
and now there's nothing left
of who you might
have been

I guess it's the weight of your mistakes
you'll never learn your place
on this sorry stage of life
and love
and war

and now sand keeps pouring down
on your rusted broken crown
from the hourglass
by which the stars
map lives

your fingers pluck at notes
the words get caught in your throat
awaiting Brutus' knife
the crowd
anticipates
the kill
of curtain call

and so in silence you'll succumb
paralyzed and numb
where all your words
get lost
and lose
their meaning

by the morning light ascending
blind but comprehending
though your skin is burned
and all your colors
faded

Author's Note

Please ignore the double "all your colors faded" in the second and last stanzas. This is an older piece, and it's been rewritten a bit since I first wrote it, another one from 2010 or 2011. So something of a work-in-progress.

Reviews

[Ken e Bujold]

so share a drink with all the hanged and drowned, what a splendid image. A great idea extremely well rendered. enjoyed my read immensely

ken

[ANTO]

"...where the dead lay down" is pretty brilliant -
"sand keeps pouring down
on your rusted broken crown
from the hourglass
by which the stars
map lives" - you cant imagine the images that fired in my mind but they were some of the best i've experienced whilst reading on here.

Go on my son - as the old football pundit might have said

[jacob erin-cilberto]

like the "dreams of a ridiculous man"
we dream of things that can never be, we write the words hoping they will have some lasting impact...but the colors do fade...i really like the reference to shakespeare...a favorite writer of mine...of course, that is if he actually wrote what he is attributed, or did Marlowe write those plays? :))) well, we may never know for sure.

Scott Joplin plucks the notes, you hit the keys, and we get a really interesting journey in this poem...

i don't think your words will lose meaning...but as poets it is a fear we all share.

[John Sullivan]

The "dreams of a ridiculous man.'' That's... astute.

The plays remain, and so their content, and their language. Anything else I might say about Shakespeare is somewhat preempted by the copy of King Lear calling over from my bookshelf, reminding me it's still gone unread.

Hmm... Abraham Lincoln once delivered a wonderful phrase concerning "every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land... touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." A wonderful line, really, though he was undoubtedly speaking of more pressing issues than the poet's quiet inner turmoil. Nevertheless, for better or worse, perhaps the angel's deviant cousins sit upon our shoulders as well, and we must to suffer their gibberish in order to reattain our perspective, some sort of balance. I fear that sometimes, in my quieter moments, I do let the quiet voice of ambition ramble on, though I like to think I have to good sense to channel that into nothing more than the next day's work, the next piece. To make the language a little tighter, perhaps the imagery more vivid, the heart of the thing a bit bolder where I may. But the fear, perhaps, of what it means, or for whom, or whether the thing might mean much at all in the end, and the drive to aspire to just a bit more, if one only may... I fear even Lady Macbeth couldn't quite compete with the Muse on her more ill tempered days, so rarely, I feel, do I meet her standards. It's her fault, really, picking such a miserable scribe. She ought to have known better.

But I digress.

Thank you for your time sir, and your words. As far as posterity goes... I do believe that tomorrow will be a Friday. It will likely resemble the Friday that came before it. It may very well look a great deal like the Friday that will follow it. To breathe perhaps, and to write another day. I guess that's all there is, really, on the matter of it. Let the chips fall where they may. All my best.

[John Sullivan]

Also sir, I've sent you a friend request, I hope you don't mind.