The Statue

An architect one night awoke from a dreadful dream.
The man had thought he’d seen his world as it should never seem.
A world of fallen Angels with joy washed away by time.
A world devoid of happiness; reason with no rhyme.
An ugly world, a corrupt world where no light would ere shine through.
A world devoid of beauty, shaded black but never blue.

So the architect jumped up and cried, “This world just cannot be!
To fix this task requires a man, an artist such as me!
I’ll make a statue better than all that came before.
A work of so much beauty, no one could ask for more.
A masterpiece of sadness, a triumph of so much joy;
A testament to Man and Hope and Every girl and boy!”

Thus he at once began his work on this monument so grand
And sought out the best materials and men throughout the land.
He found the greatest sculptor who could craft curves smooth as silk.
He bought 10 tons of marble whiter than whitest milk.
He hired the most skilled craftsmen to construct the monstrous scheme,
And finally he’d at last assembled his majestic team.

He devised a fleet of Angels, all beautiful and pure,
To stand for Hope and Beauty and to serve as mankind’s cure.
Some smiled, inspiring rapture; others sighed and sadness filled.
Some loved and laughed and died and cried; forgave but never killed
All that humans could become, the quintessential Man.
Such a work so grand and strong was the architect’s great plan.

But it wasn’t “meant to be.”
The sculptor was not sober,
The marble wasn’t free.
The craftsmen was one guy called “Moe”
Who worked for food and lived below
The bridge next to the architect’s cardboard shack.

The architect still planned and schemed
On charcoal sketches by polluted streams,
And the two men built a mound of dirt
Like that little Cupid squirt,
But his eyes were crossed
And his wings broken, merely stumps.

The mock-angel had a bow of plastic
And an arrow that was aluminum foil
From a meal less than fantastic
That the patrons of some restaurant had
Thrown Away
Onto the wretched, trash-strewn soil.

When it was finished, Moe died
Of a broken heart
Vessel and no one cried
Except the cupid and the architect. In the
Rainstorm of tears
The cupid was torn apart
And became the
Debris and a pile of mud
That it always was.

And the architect,
His plan a wreck,
Went back to sleep
Never to build or dream or fly or sing
Again
Sleeping on the dissipated ruins of
Cupid’s wing.

And then in sleep another nightmare of futures hence
Caused the god to bolt upright and at once commence
In crafting a wondrous beauty like the world had never seen
Ignoring verisimilitudes of a reality too mean.