EP&M Online Satire
FOUR POEMS

by

MICHAEL CURTIS
Sculptor, Poet



                                       GAME DAY
                                                by Michael Curtis

Today we play a football game;
    Praise the yellow and blue.
Today we're merry, light and gay;
    We'll kick their butts – Haroo!
So fly the colors, sing the tune
And shout Hurray! for the school!

Hurray, Hurray, Hurrah, Haroo!
    Come boys let's drink a beer.
Hurray, Hurray, Hurrah, Haroo!
    Now women come to cheer:
Hial! Hail! diversity,
Universal equality!

For here we have a first and ten
    And only seven players;
Four are women, three are men
    Because this makes it fair.
The other team's a sorry lot,
It's just the white ones that they've got!

Hurrah, Haroo, Hurray, Haree!
    We had to paint 'em black;
To paint 'em black so they could be
    Stronger, bigger, fast!
But then we made a yellow one –  
Why? Ha-he we did it just for fun!

As you can see we have two clocks
    And too two sets of lines;
The short for them, the long for us
     – We're better 'cuse we're kind;   
Yet, we will beat them anyway
Because it is our turn today.

Haroo, Haroo, Hurrah, Hurray!
    We took the runner's legs:
We lame the best for justice' sake
    So they can't run away.
The other guys there in a line –  
You see their legs together tied?

We've done this so they can not catch
    The limping quarterback;
Without his crutch he was the best
    And so – we broke his foot!
We also took the pants from him
So he'll fell shame if he should win!

Hurrah, Haroo, Haree, Hurray!
    We put her in her place;
She was pretty – we smashed her face,
    Her teeth we rearranged.
The cheerers now are ugly all;
Susan, Howard, Ali, Paul!

“I pledge allegiance to the flag,
    I weep for pride and joy
That everyone can be the same,
    That girls can be like boys.”
We sing in well rehearse'd praise
On this happy football day!

Ha-ha, Ha-ha, Hurrah, Haroo!
    You see the bloody tongues?
That's what we do to those who boo,
    So come now let's have fun.
There's the whistle -- now it begins.
Hial! Hail! it must not end!




RENEWAL
          by Michael Curtis

Denounce the old, proclaim the new,
Destroy the good, the bad debut,
    Logic torment,
    Let's all invent,
    Now hail the happy accident.

New music our soar ear torments,
It surely is not heaven sent:
    The banging drum,
    The Devil's hum
    From Hell it comes
To shake the world to dark descent,
The revolution to foment.

The vacant whale's whistling tune,
Or pretended wisdoms of the loon:
    Sing nature's song,
    You can't go wrong
    Proclaims the back to nature throngs;
Reject the capitalistic goon,
Beneath the moon let's all commune.

Citizens of our New Age
Follow the new sage's rage;
Be free, have fun, melody shun,
And naked dance beneath the sun.

Chisel's clink does not ring true,
Sculptors to object's error flew:
    Betray the soil,
    Never to toil,
    Smash, despise, despoil!
Volumes are old, objects are new,
So statues we bid you a tart "adieu".

The painter's brush has run amuck,
It's stuffed with goop and filled with guck:
    Spattered with glee
    By chimpanzees
    Who own Picasso's pedigree.
The civilized to it say, "Yuck,
The painter's brush has run amuck."

Denounce the old, proclaim the new,
Destroy the good, the bad debut,
    Logic torment,
    Let's all invent,
    Now hail the happy accident.

The architect who once did build,
With beauty towns and cities filled:
    Uses computers,
    Invention neuters,
    Machines are the practitioners;
By repetition invention's stilled,
By ordinance is beauty killed.

Let's reinvent the sister-arts,
Break their bones, tear out their hearts,
    Sculpture upend,
    The buildings bend,
    And paintings rend,
On precedent let's turn our butts and fart!

So slap my back and let's shout "Wee!"
Then raise a glass and toast to thee
Great artists who new visions see –
The end of you, the end of me.

Sit silent in the theatre,
To Hollywood you must defer:
    Worship the stars,
    Seek the bizarre,
    Attend the leftist seminar.
'Pon actors accolades confer,
You must concur.  Death to the Dissenter!

From television we must learn
To accept, not to discern:
    Turn off the mind,
    Be the same kind
    As every other fool's behind.
Mindless let us all adjourn:
What you give to T.V. in return you earn.

Denounce the old, proclaim the new,
Destroy the good, the bad debut,
    Logic torment,
    Let's all invent,
    Now hail the happy accident.

Profess! To one-another sing,
On normal people scorn to fling
    With oozing ink
    The words which stink
    Of New Age think.
Upon the throat of virtue spring –
To be adverse is now the thing.

Or to repeat the latest phrase,
To be thought hip is all the craze:
    The one who cares,
    The one who shares,
    The one who the whole world repairs.
Professors blind lead through the maze,
They kiss the vague, they hug the haze.

Let's dance, let's sing, a new age bring,
Let's all be loud, let's all be bores,
Mindless destroy what came before,
Let's tear it up, enjoy the gore.

No longer poet's voice aglow
With lightening flash, transcendent show;
    For truth they fear,
    Hold errors dear
    So no one hears:
They speak but do not know.

To be lovely, to rhyme, they can't,
Stupid they blurt with awkward chant,
    Their voices drone
    In phrases groan
    Grammar unknown,
A vision's lie, a doggish pant:
Poets today are silly things.

Denounce the old, proclaim the new,
Destroy the good, the bad debut,
    Logic torment,
    Let's all invent,
    Now hail the happy accident.
Now cry my friends, barbarity is renewed.


 

BUFFALOED
        by Michael Curtis

Braves at table nibble on
Salty crackers and capons
While the much beloved squaws
Exercise their powdered jaws
By cracking open lobster claws.
See the orgiastic faces
Praise the chef with well turned phrases;
See the tribe of plump Caucasians
Bite with liberal appetites
Into a loathing of all things white.

“Buffalo, when eating grasses
Blow less gas
From their asses
Than the steer
Whose foreign rear
Blows ozone through the stratosphere.”

Each hoary head nods in rhythm
To the fluffies they are given.
“Woeth me, and woeth me” –
Woeth each so woeithly –
“Natives live in nature clean
While we, while we,
O don’t you see!
Are both the cause and the disease.”

See the heaps of cups and saucers
Heaped with sauces, breads, and butters,
Meats and bones, and skins and sinews:
“Oh, O it’s true! we waste the menu
Of the planet.  Damn it!”

Here, the God of the Machine
Might relieve the tortured scene;
But no, he’ll hide the buffalo
That die in rotting piles below
The cliff where tens of thousands fell
Driven by the Indian yells
To buffalo hell.


CUCKOO SONG
        by Michael Curtis

A cummin’ in’s ah summer,
    Lhude’ we sing “cuccu”;
Groweth seeds n’ smoketh weeds –
    Springeth da barbeques.
        Sing cuccu!
Ow! bleteth plastic booms.
    Loudeth after rhymes crude;
Belching aireth, big bucks stareth,
    Mary sings, “cuccu”.
    Cuccu, cucuu,
    W’all singesth thu cuccu.
    Sweet swik we never knew.
Sing cuccu new!  Sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu!  Sing cuccu nu!



Game Day, Renewal, Buffaloed, and Cuckoo Song
Copyright © 2005 by Michael Curtis
Not to be reprinted without permission of the author.
Michael Curtis received a classical training in painting, sculpture, and architecture.  This training was concentrated in buon and secco fresco, egg tempera, black oil, and copper engraving.  But following his studies at the Kunsthistories Library in Florence he became a statue maker and has worked in this field for over 20 years.  His most significant sculptural commissions include The History of Texas at Texas Rangers Ball-Park, Arlington, Texas, the largest US frieze of the 20th Century; numerous portrait busts for the Library of Congress, The Supreme Court Building, and other public buildings.  His recent statues include General Eisenhower and The Shipbuilder, both in Alexandria, Virginia; and current commissions include the Thurgood Marshall bust for the U.S. Courts Building, garden statues, portraits, et cetera.  His specialty is relief portraits and fine medals.  Also to his credit, Mr. Curtis has had over 30 one-man and group exhibitions; his painting, sculpture, and architectural drawings are represented in over 250 private and public collections.  Although not a registered architect, he has produced architectural designs which have been built.  

For over 20 years Mr. Curtis has taught art and art history at art schools, colleges, and universities; too, he is a frequent lecturer, recently at the National Gallery of Art.  His interest in art education has led him to chair the sculpture department at the Art League, and to sit on the Board of Governors of The University of Michigan School of Art.  He was also a guest curator for two years at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Department of African, Oceanic, and New World Cultures.

Mr. Curtis has held positions on other art and art related board’s of directors, including; the U.S. State Department Seminarians, the Business Consortium for the Arts, The Michigan Academy of Science Arts and Letters (Arts Chair), Artists Equity (Michigan President), and Citizens for Public Art.

Mr. Curtis maintains a studio/atelier, The Studio, and he owns a small manufacturing company, The Classical Gallery, Inc.  Other current projects include:  Founding Member of Ars Civica, The National Civic Arts Society; editing 15 books of verse written in the past ten years; an architectural treatise on the small American home.   Photos of some of his sculpture may be found in the archives of EP&M Online, as some of his other poems. 

Mr. Curtis's poetry received a book-length introduction, excerpted from seven collections, in Pivot No. 57.