Mr. Anonymous
for R.E.M.

 

Call it by any name but dusk is equal to dawn,
they're both of a day gone by, nameless as this poem.
And where is he in this, joyful as a leprechaun?
Does speed even matter in a timeflow without mournings,
without rhymes, or chantings?

He drums his fingers on a windowsill, independently nervous
inside,
fearing nothing at all but this laughing gas of a life.
It's the same windowsill shot here, morning or afternoon,
it's one hell of a full-length movie going on in a doorless
room.

It's the same window shot frame from outside, as of
someone howling at a lamppost.
Follow it to the morning and it's smiling at a blue coast.
You can't compare the beauty of night with the charm of
birds at the sun's rising,
especially when you're drunk, and you're not, and that's why
we're watching.

As Lao Tzu might put it, depression begets happiness, and
so he is—happy.
Bottles scream for consumption, taking him high, staying
this low-key.
The experience itself is a world of its own, with its sunrises
and sunsets
while yet earth-bound low. Yeah, yet in the clouds, walking
like a rocket.

But he seldom walks, and whenever he does tries to skip on
leaves,
these that remind him of memories that hurt, and what
gives?

We call the mornings mornings, as if it's ours to call it
anything.
There's poetry in good hangovers at a level of forgetting.
And so he rises up now, barefoot, as if to take a dip,
what movie title can we give it, The Old Man and His Ship?

He drags a sack of bottles through the sand, a message
inside each cap.
The weight nearly drops him, but he thinks it's very light.
Light as the shimmer on the sand and the tiny crabs,
heavy as nostalgic grass that think they're cacti in this white.

He seldom walks this way, and everytime he does tries to
skip on grass,
those that remind him of memories that hurt, and what's
lost?

All of us here in front of this window, or this coast, or this
face know
all that's been said about time and life, of their heights and
pits, of
their growths and dives, their travels and returns, rises and
falls.
And so now see this man's low point and the curse before
he palled.

He never walked this way before, and when he did tried to
skip paths,
those that threatened to return him to a past. And what may
scathe

this new utopia will never ever make him feel sorry,
he was only being true, like you and me, searching for his
rightful glory.

 

 

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This poem is a variation cum interpretation of a 1992 radio song titled Low, written by the American alternative-rock band REM. REM's rise inspired a lot of independent record labels to support alternative rock acts from the '80s to the '90s. Vocalist Michael Stipe has also published written poetry.

 

 

 

Copyright © 1999, 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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