06 Jul The Ogre, Pts. I–IV
I
The Ogre learnt to speaketh
No belfry hast ever be quiet
As the Vespers nigh
II
Ogres and monsters are real,
Had you not closed your eyes and ears
You would have known the fears:
Now they have none appeal.
III
The Ogre invented many things, first was fire,
But also some basics like the football and wrench.
The Ogre has won every revolution to transpire,
American, Agricultural, Sexual, of course the French–
The Ogre lives in the legends of every giant of folk-lore,
You called him Paul Bunyan and Enkidu too,
But these legends muddied up the truth from yore,
So let me set the record straight, for you.
God gave him a name when He made him from mud,
This would be his only ever birthday-gift,
Because it was lost to time at the time of the flood,
And next to Noah he was on a barque set adrift.
The Ogre wrote his true name in the currents of the oceans,
So that the whales would sing to him in their own way.
While Adam named animals, the Ogre named the sins,
But we don’t use those names for them today.
He made the first sale, sandals Cain could afford,
Because he had treated him like his own son.
The Ogre when the world was born cut its umbilical cord,
So God in His fury forces him to do the same for everyone,
And Cain was the first so he liked him well enough,
Until Cain was slain and then he felt some small grief
But the Ogre is hard-nosed and tougher than tough.
Yes, that Ogre skulks the narrow roads of time and belief,
The Ogre held the funeral for when the dinosaurs went extinct.
His sober eulogy had a dash of dry levity,
Then he turned to the mammals and then he winked,
And the new widow blushed and their child is the monkey.
The Ogre at some point acquired an acquired taste,
Little boys and little girls he can swallow up whole.
But lucky for us he has a slow metabolic pace
So he watches his weight and has a calorie goal.
The Ogre crouches in wind, his voice is bad luck,
He makes volcanoes where he digs down latrines
And if he swims in a river, the water will get stuck
Then it becomes a lake, and upriver its streams.
The Ogre is charming to some but too sarcastic for me,
And especially after he sits down for a drink.
He was friends with Cleopatra (just platonically),
But that is the biggest name he knows, I think.
The Ogre cannot be struck down by a mere man,
Unless the Ogre decides to lie upon the grass
At his own discretion and just because he can,
He doesn’t often but for some he gives a pass.
He wrestles fallen angels in the most waterless places,
God permits it for now, but He will break it up.
The Ogre knows names but he better knows faces.
He stole a hound from Hell when it was just a pup
And the devil tried to goad him into its return
So he hides in bottles of spirits to ambush him,
That is why drinking alcohol has that burn.
The Ogre can balance a hat by the brim
And knows every orphan who know him as well,
He witnessed every murder to ever have been
Even if he wasn’t born in the black pit of Hell
Its denizens see him as none other than kin.
The Ogre does still roam in a sort of daze,
He knows the day of perdition is set,
But thinks he might live in echoing ways,
For Christ died for no angel nor Ogre yet
And now this harrowed land he treads among
Lost anything worth preserving it for
He no longer hides like when sin was young
And children see him more vivid than before.
He sits on the cusp of metaphor disguise
And sees brutal ends to the ends of his curse,
The Ogre looms through the veil of innocent eyes,
The evil that I feared as a boy– that was worse.
IV
Has it not been written of him,
This Ogre of a world too small,
Has wandered lonesome from all
Since the unformed Earth was dim?