The Kingdom of Pissemyre
by Patricia | 3.27.09by J. Max Wilson
East of the cemented waste, the aspen stood, a sapling still,
And there a few aphidian peasants leeched their lives from phloem’s rill.
They lapped the aspen’s sweetest sap; rapt in bohemian blissmare, blind—
And sapped the sapling of its health (though still it prospered of a kind).
Then came the Bishop Barnaby and Stinkfly Deacon forth to feed,
And sanguinary sermons spoke with lurid liturgy and creed.
And so, by priestcraft’s gory glut, their doctrine inadvertently
Restored the tree to verdant form, though only temporarily.
Then from across the crackèd desert came the Piss’myre army, strong—
The ‘nighted nibelungian host marched one-by-one as ‘counts the song.
And up the sapling, up they marched (still one-by-one-by-one) until
With formic might the pissant host subdued the lesser peasants’ will.
The dreaded deacons then received the doctrine they themselves had taught.
The bloody bishops banished were, to starve to death for all they wot.
And in their place the Piss’myre lords set up a new society;
A kingdom grand, a great machine of order and efficiency:
“Divide, assign, to each allot a place, a part, a role to play;
To each his branch, his twig, his leaf, an overseer to obey.
Revoke their freedom every whit, yet to their vice impose no let:
To cultivate and harvest more their sweet, mellif’rous excrement.”
And gladly, gladly did submit the chattel to their slavery,
Contented only to be free to wallow in debauchery.
So nurtured by their overlords the lech’rous population waxed,
And ‘neath the load of sponsored sin the aspen sapling’s blood was taxed.
Through sun-scorched day and dark new moon, the kingdom throve thus for a spell,
And still the tree, all wan the leaves, drew strength from root’s deep, clonal well.
‘Till on a night an august storm with thund’rous wind ‘rose from the west;
The trees all danced ‘fore God’s great breath; from each its wrath obeisance wrest’.
The scent of dawn hung o’re the earth, while sun’s ascent revoked the night,
And lo, what new apocalypse dispensed now was by mourning light?
The jagged edge of xylem cracked; the leaves pressed wet against the ground;
Behold! The Kingdom down is cast! It’s unseen canker now is found!
There! bored by pissants through the pith, an hidden tunnel had been wrought
Up through the trunk, through which the yield of sin-crop might be swiftly brought!
And compromisèd thus the constitution of the sapling’s core,
The aspen could not then endure the storm and tribulation sore.
To ev’ry kingdom, vast or microscopic, certain laws are laid,
And exhortations, prophesies, and types and shadows in them played.
And so a warning sign is raised to kingdoms great and persons small:
Beware the taste of honeydew, lest thou like Piss’myre also fall.
For helpful notes on this poem’s content, go here.
J. Max Wilson’s personal blog, Sixteen Small Stones, may be found here.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Note from editor: While not specifically about spring, this allegorical poem weaves nature themes into an interesting, Aesop-like instructive tale.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for including my submission, Patricia. :)
I had never thought of this poem as “Aesop-like” but now that you say so, I can see it that way.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Max,
Just found your comment caught in the filter. I left the duplicate.
Sorry about the delay!
March 28th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
The opening bothers me. Sorry, my idiosyncratic non-treehugger bias.
Concrete is generally intentionally constructive. Bare dirt is often very wasteful and unproductive. Without the nurturing hand of man to till the soil, it produce thorns and thistles naturally.
You’re not going to convince me that the natural world is not the enemy to man. I have lived too long too think anything otherwise. There is beauty and symmetry where organized nature is governed by the proper rules, but I’ve watched too many predators tear the living guts out of their hot blood-pumping prey dying a screaming agony of death to believe that nature is anything without the law of tooth and nail, fang and claw, fight to the death, survival of the fittest, and the winner take all, because he eats the loser alive.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I wish we had more dirt lots around here than concrete wastes…
March 28th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Jim,
Try reading Max’s poem as you would an instructional fable where insects, animals, plants etc. are stand-ins for humans.
This poem participates in that long and respectable tradition; the moral of the story comes in the last four lines.
The “concrete waste” is not as consequential as all that; among its literary purposes: to provide a stark contrast with that last fragile green stem of life, the aspen sapling.
Yeah, and there’s something like this point in the end of the poem: The ants bored out the life of the sapling for their own benefit, without a thought for their host. In doing so, they …
So …
March 28th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Lora,
You wouldn’t happen to be livin’ near Pittsburgh, wouldja?
(Though what you’re describing also sounds like parts of New Jersey.)
March 29th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Well, Phillie has got so expensive that parts of Jersey have migrated to the ‘Burgh.
Not to threadjack.
I will say that I had to read this poem a few times, and came away feeling enlightened. Thanks!
March 30th, 2009 at 7:57 am
@Lora : If you came away feeling enlightened, then that is a very kind compliment indeed. Thank you!
@Jim & @Patricia: It is fun for me to read what others see in my poetry. In the case of this poem, I tend more toward what J.R.R. Tolkien termed “applicability” than outright allegory. In other words, the imagery draws upon archetypes and symbols intended to be applicable to a great many things rather than an allegory for a specific idea or thing. On one level, this poem could be considered a meditation on perception from different scopes or scales. From the point of view of an ant, a road, a parking lot, or a driveway might seem a “cemented waste,” the purpose of which is not comprehensible from the scale at which the pissant perceives, regardless of its utility at a larger scope.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:22 am
“Applicability” is a good word, and meaningful for this poem, more meaningful than “allegorical.”