Probing the Question

My good professor friend once posed the question,

Would you lie for the sake of the poem?

I replied what good would be in that, the word is mighty powerful.

He asked, What is that guys like you and me are after? What do you think
we're putting in our time for, what is it that we are trying to do?

I hesitated and muttered sheepishly To tell the truth, word for word,
and tell the tale no else has heard.

To that he said, That's a fine & good answer, what's been fed to you to spit back.
But if that's all there is then details really don't matter. Go and be a philosopher.

Because there's a thousand people who've heard a thousand stories
just as many as you can tell. And yet, the poem will survive no matter which
way you tell it, whatever its spin.

That's why we have copy printers & zip disks, so no matter what you come up with, there will always be a spare.

But the font will shift when you're not looking, when it's restless & irritable,
It will scoff at you like the lover who outclasses you,
it will ask to see other people so it can experience other avenues &
give you you the age old line, if you love me you'll set me free & I might come back to you.

It will tire of your moralizing, your rigidity, your thinking in the box,
it will imagines vistas for itself, possibilities
that you have failed to see from lack of discipline.

Then, with the desparation of losing your grip on it forever,
you will begin to make up new names for it, you will teach it foreign tongues,
you will dress up with flowery speeches , cover its cheeks with thick rouge,

And prop dark glasses over the lines of its face.
& then, my friend you will LIE for the sake of the poem,
lie for the SAKE of the poem, and whether it kills you to see it live without you,

whether you scream through the doors it keeps opening for you,
or you take up the bottle again, promise it a villa in the Greek isles but

that thing will live without you, and will find life after you & for THAT, you will lie for the sake of poem,
because the lie is the sacrifice, because someone did it for you, & others may need to hear that lie,

More than you need to hear what you've always known was true.