not with a bang but a wimper…

Apologies in advance to T.S. Eliot, but listen carefully when the American Idol kids sing. Deep within those high notes squeezed so earnestly out the tops of their heads, aren’t they are only crying:

We are the hollow ones

We are the stuffed ones

Yearning together

Heads filled with air, Alas!

Our tight voices, when

We sing together

Are hysterical and meaningless

As wind through a tunnel

Or smoke alarms sounding

In an empty house.

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who will cross

With direct eyes, to AI’s fourth season

Remember us – if at all – not as hot

Brilliant stars , but only

As the hollow ones

The stuffed ones.

*************

And not so deeply hidden within the regular events of this day…

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

Why doesn’t my new cell phone work?

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Gotta empty the Spam folder.

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

Just one more hand of Free Cell.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.