The Rudiments of Justice (from The Songs Of The Erinnyes, Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies by Jay Noya, Brigantium Press)

I get by in my forlorn and rudimentary fashion
Everything seems incongruous and I leave it incongruous
Every word I catch and most faces slipping by
Reveal little that is crucial and meaningful
So I keep to myself and watch my feet
And take a dozen spinning and dancing steps
When I think no one’s watching
It’s an innocent game that keeps me furtive and alert
It also makes rather more inconsistent
Than I feel I ought to allow myself to be
I stand accused because I’ve been detained and brought
Before a hooded judge in an iron-walled chamber
Where he sits high up on a throne-like chair
I’m urged to plead my case of lugubriousness
I’m urged to plead my case of loneliness
I’m urged to plead my case of turgidness
I’m urged to plead my case of independence
I’m urged to plead my case of originality
All great offenses and great unpardonable crimes
Against the authority of the unimaginative and Ordinary Man
It’s the judge who has mentioned the Ordinary Man
(in capitals the judge stresses always always in capitals)
As being at the crux of my case
Mine are all grave and dubious and pernicious offenses
I’m obliged to watch the judge’s roving gazes about the courtroom
I stand when I’m called and say nothing
And I’m ordered to sit and am forgotten for days
Days that stretch into months and the months into years
The judge hasn’t cast a glance in my direction in seventeen years
And I’m wondering whether I should raise my hand
And accuse the judge and his jury and the attorneys
And the eighteen or is it nineteen men and women in the courtroom
Strangers who have been summoned I was told once
Who have been summoned to attend the proceedings daily
But I don’t stand up and choose instead to wither away in my seat
I can hear my skin wrinkle and crack it’s been pulverizing
Gradually and indistinctly except that now my sight is failing me
I’m very old and can’t hear too well what the judge says
I can’t understand what the lawyers argue and explain to the jury
I’m not certain that I know what’s expected of me
In the iron-walled chamber with the hooded judge
Up in his iron throne attended by a hooded jury
With several robed and hooded attorneys arguing the complexities
Of a case that reminds me of places and people
I might have once been acquainted with
But that I’m not certain now were once real people after all
My memory is failing and the rest of my body crumbles
I can’t stand up unaided and my voice isn’t there
When I move my tongue to speak to say my name
Once I might have been able to follow the days into the night
And I might have been able to claim that I understood
Something of my predicament
In that way I wasn’t much different from the next person
I spoke and argued vehemently and laughed heartily
When it suited me and felt the inclination
And saw the chance of gaining something for my efforts
But what is it that I am in this court and what have I become
Before this hooded judge in his iron-walled courtroom?
Who knows me and who remembers me
And who’s going to speak in my behalf?
It’s been ages since I saw my own reflection
It’s been years and years since I heard the sound of my voice
I sit in my corner watching hooded strangers
Accusing me of crimes I neither recall nor understand
I sit in my corner and periodically shut my eyes
I can do one trick and do it often to amuse myself
And I’m not about to disclose what the trick is here
I’m too old and can not countenance yet another trial
The hooded judge has railed against me for the past fifty-three years
With a lifted arm and a pointed finger he harangues all present
That society can no longer abide poets (whatever their guises)
And tolerate their self-indulgent ways and whimsy
Fire is too good and too quick a punishment for your ilk
He’s shouted at me from his throne
You’ll be tortured with knives and drown in a tub
That’s to be your sentence and your end
And your body shall be burnt in secret
And your name shall be erased from all archived documents


© J. Noya 2006