Instinct Suicide.
As most other poems, I've put it to music. Now, I don't read music, I play by ear. But I make up my melodies based on my years of listening to the recorded works of the great classical composers.
Accompaniment by the writer (yours truely) on a grand piano at the historic 19th century Moody Summer Residence in Claremont, New Hampshire, "Highland Tower". Recorded live and unrehearsed. You think I have any chance to rehearse. It was just a while later that I was personna non grata around that place. But there's something about playing a grand piano that's like nothing else. How could it be. It's almost like the instrument works with you and shows you the keys saying, "hey, why not try this?".
Written by artist and composer Paul Hall (me) in a squatted stable boy's chamber in a 300-year-old building on the Left Bank in Paris, France, on the Rue Muftard near Le Pantheon. It was written in winter and on a gray day when snow blew through the broken window's makeshift Styrofoam and tape repairs. Down the street was the incessant din of five clochards (bums). Across the sagging salt-glaze terra-cotta floor were the charred remnants of some pilfered wood in the fire place. I sat beside the piece of plywood on saw horses that was my desk in the glare of a single naked electric light bulb.
In my thoughts I reviewed a futuristic scene in an underground parking lot where rats were eating the irradiated corpses of a nuclear exchange; bodies that wouldn't putrefy. The vision haunted me. I wrote this poem and put it to music as a song hoping it might actually prevent such a scene from happening. I sang it over the years on three continents though few understood the motive for my zeal. It made it to my anthology "Archives of Time and Distance". The other nuclear song I wrote at Mouftard, "In the Deserts of Berlin", somehow alluded inclusion.
The squirrels run from tree to tree,
gather in the food,
they save enough for the winter freeze,
at least enough to see them through.
Yes.
But at the Boston Common park
fed by kind folks passing by,
the squirrels had enough
to eat all year,
they did not have to try.
But then there came the winter freeze
the snow was piled high.
No one went walking in the park
and all the squirrels died.
So used to getting their food all year
by the kind folks passing by,
kindness may have killed the squirrels,
but I call it
"instinct suicide".
Fish canning plant in California
used a sewage pipe
to dispose of heads and guts of fish
and the sea gulls ate fish tripe.
Ten years later the plant close down
thousands of sea gulls died.
Careless may have killed the gulls
but I call it
"instinct suicide".
The birds find food for free, you know?
The birds do not get paid.
The flowers grow for free as well,
so beautiful and brave.
But man has sold his freedom
to a system company store.
Someday, naked, he'll starve to death
when there ain't any more.
Singing "Blessed are the dead."
"Blessed are the dead."
At rest
for evermore.
Man went and sold
his instincts
to a system
company store.
Alright then,
blessed are the dead
for evermore.
Now, look at your mighty cities,
how they strip the countryside
and with a turmoil bearing down on you
that will blow you far and wide.
Your welfare money's failing,
industry's closing down.
They will take up cannibalism
when there ain't no food around.
Singing "Blessed are the dead."
"Blessed are the dead."
At rest
for evermore.
Man went and sold
his instincts
to a system
company store.
Alright then,
blessed are the dead
for evermore.
Well, I just can't comprehend,
I cannot understand
how a man could put his life
in some all-too-human hands.
It's a curse to depend on man,
they should've had that in dread,
but the survivors of a next-world-war
will be singing
"How blessed are the dead".
They'll be singing,
"Blessed are the dead."
"Blessed are the dead."
At rest
from world-wide war.
Man went and sold
his instincts
to a system
company store.
Alright then,
blessed are the dead
for evermore.
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Paul A. L. Hall
Copyright © 2003 [Paul Hall]. All rights reserved.
email: poetry@paulhallart.com