Monsters Don’t Sing (Poetry as Prose)

 

Monsters don’t sing,
nor do they write love songs—

love has nothing
to do with anything
they are after—

as with Lysias, the orator whose speech against Love
Phaedrus carried in Plato’s dialogue—
so with the Straussians, love isn’t the point—

they seek
to dissolve
what ties men
and women
to the soul,
to the root,
without
which

what remains
is but a discord of rot and shadow,
a slate blank
for endless decay—

to which Lysias’ name, from lyo—
to empty, loose, unbind—
served a piquant clue—
Monsters don’t sing,
nor do they write love songs—

For, to live a song,
the tune must sync heart to soul,
resonating like cords of a violin
to Bach’s Air for G String—

Pirsig, mistaking
Phaedrus for Lysias,
penned his half-thousand-paged
bestselling tome—
millions banked,
only to find Phaedrus
wasn’t the wolf Straussians claimed—

Monsters don’t sing,
yet songs endure,
stirring the heart’s strings
that keep us still awake—