The Funny Men
1
We are the funny men
The laughter men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with mirth. Alas!
Our wavering voices, when
We giggle together
Are loud and senseless
As hyenas in dry grass
Or gales stirring shards of glass
In our dry cellar
Form of clay, color of slick.
Fictitious force, turbulent motion;
Those who have crossed
With eyes darting to and fro,
To death's other kingdom
Remember us -- if at all --
Not as grasping, violent souls
But only as
The funny men
2
Eyes I dare not meet in ads
In death's advertisement kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Blinding light on a broken column
There, is a tube man swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More shrill and more booming
Than a cancelled star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's advertisement kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
(Thinnest phone, cleanest drip, slickest rizz)
On the grass
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer--
Not that final meeting
In the Find Out kingdom
Here you go! I’ve rewritten the text to avoid direct reference to the theme:
III
This is the slop land
This is swamp land
Here, the seed rounds
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a gilded man's hand
Under the twinkle of a parasite star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Fully sure that
We and our money are soon parted.
4
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of choking stars
In this hollow valley
The worms atop our kingdoms' bones.
In this last of meeting places
We wail together
A barbaric yawp
Gathered on this beach of the sunken river
Sightless, unless
The flames reappear
As the perpetual star
Tetraethyllead rose
Of death's Find Out kingdom
The hope only
Of unserious men.
5
Baby shark
Mommy shark
Daddy shark
Grandma shark
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Comedy
Don’t want to meet your daddy
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Comedy
Just want you in my Caddy
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Comedy
Don’t want to meet your mama
Just want to
I’m just
Just want to make you
Grandpa shark
Where’d they go
No one’s here
Sleep again
Adaptation of The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot, with additional inspiration taken from:
Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman
Baby Shark, author unknown
Hey Ya!, by Outkast
Director's Commentary
I am taking a decidedly lighter tone and will not be dissecting the words here, mainly because they're mostly not my words and being that depressing for even longer doesn't feel very useful for my mental health.
This poem is the result of two impulses:
Wanting to remember that one poem that coined the phrase "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper"
"Okay but what if it was the 'Funny' men instead"
And this consumed an evening with writing because it's the sort of foul sprout that can't be plucked until it blooms into whatever this is.
I still have mixed results on remembering what this poem is called (still missed it when literally "Not with bang but with a whimper" appeared on Jeopardy). On the other hand, I did get to know the rest of the poem and what's going on with this completely out of context video from a Simpsons clip channel, so I guess it evens out somewhat.
My one-sentence conclusion on the poetry is "damn, T. S. Eliot really is good at poetry" because even after playing absurd mad libs with his work, it's still a pretty coherent piece.
Parting Tangents:
Part of this poem was written using AI (Annoying Imitation).
Knowing that the last stanza contained a modified nursery rhyme and knowing that there was a correct answer for what the "funny men" variation of that nursery rhyme would be, I was initially surprised how little material was actually in the song (a majority of syllables in the song are "doo", with the second most common being "shark"). I did the old geezer thing of making a show on how much less interesting modern children's songs are, but after checking old nursery rhymes I'm not convinced many (any?) convey much meaning at all. It also turns out that speculation on the meaning of these is a time honored tradition featuring debate on whether they expose children to bad ideas.
Wait a minute, Baby Shark has existed for decades?
Wow, really enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing. The ending really landed for me. (Sorry I don't normally comment on poetry so I'm not sure how to respond properly)
I don't think you meant to leave this line in the final post; or perhaps you did. Either way, reading it reminded me what a strange time it is to be alive.