Dead Poets - Baba Brinkman

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid

And on her dulcimer she played

Singing of Mount Abora

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song

To such a deep delight 'twould win me

That with music loud and long

I would build that dome in air

That sunny dome!

those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there

And all should cry, Beware!

Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed

And drunk the milk of Paradise

I’m livin' every day with the dead poets' society

Rioting inside my head, so it requires me

To keep every word I’ve read close beside me

Inspiring me to never go quietly

I’m posturing like I’m the offspring of Oscar Wilde

The foster child of Geoffrey Chaucer;

now

Hip-hop's the trial I face here, so I adopt the style

But I’ve got to make clear that since my eighth year

I’ve been possessed by Shakespeare and William Blake’s spirits

And still I wait to hear a voice like T.S.

Elliot’s

And Percy Shelley is the first to tell me just

How to speak out of turn and keep my verse rebellious

I read Keats and learn from a grecian urn

How to reach eternity through the gyre where Yeats purns

So I can meet Traherne, plus I’m a freak like Burns

With his twenty-some children, though I’m still a young pilgrim

And I’m buildin' a temple from the skills my tongue’s yieldin'

So I feel like John Milton;

paradise is lost

For the thrill;

I’m John Skelton crossed with Wordsworth

And my zeal is unwelcome in George Herbert’s church

I’m livin' every day with the dead poets' society

Rioting inside my head, so it requires me

To keep every word I’ve read close beside me

Inspiring me to never go quietly

For a challenge I’m known to approach talent shows with

Poems that I stole from Edgar Allen Poe’s lips

Opium hits dope Alexander Pope’s wits

I was Samuel Coleridge in a trance when I wrote this

And I awoke with the whole song done

I felt the soul of John Donne;

Andrew Marvel

Taught me to chase the sun;

I can’t make it stand still

So instead I’ll make it run, with puns denser

Than Edmund Spencer’s, and modern lyrics

Modeled on Robert Herrick’s;

when I dispense words

It’s like a forge is firin', and I’m strikin' the iron

Inspired by Lord Byron when I’m writin' the Siren

Song;

evidence of desire went wrong

And lost innocence;

my memory’s gone

In a sense, Tennyson has been reborn

In a form with the fingerprints of Henry Vaughn

I’m livin' every day with the dead poets' society

Rioting inside my head, so it requires me

To keep every word I’ve read close beside me

Inspiring me to never go quietly

As a poet I’m conscious of the goals I accomplish

That I owe to accomplices, and when I’m feelin' honest

My conscience bids me to admit to stealin' sonnet

Styles from Philip Sydney;

I’m fulfillin' a promise

I gave Dylon Thomas to rage against the dyin'

Of light;

I’m like Adonis: I’m still a novice

But I already got the skills to thrill a Goddess

Or start a riot in the heart;

that’s why it’s pounding

I’m Thomas Wyatt’s foundling;

on Ezra Pound’s wings

I fly, quietly grounding my weight on the past’s crutches

I’m Robert Browning, and this rap is «My Last Dutchess»

I’m puttin' the last touches on the way it’s sounding

In strange surroundings my grasp clutches

For balance;

I spin words, recalling how fast structures

Fell and splintered at my feet like Alan Ginsberg

That’s how I’m ensured power of speech, and now I’ve been heard

I’m livin' every day with the dead poets' society

Rioting inside my head, so it requires me

To keep every word I’ve read close beside me

Inspiring me to never go quietly

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments…

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so…

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes

On what wings dare he aspire

What the hand dare seize the fire…

As holy and enchanted

As 'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover…

Who’d stoop to blame this sort of trifling

Even had you skill in speech, which I have not…

Well those passions read, which yet survive

Stamped on these lifeless things…

To whom thou sayest «Beauty is Truth

Truth Beauty, that is all ye know on earth

And all ye need to know»

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run