The Masterpiece: Parts I-VII

I went ahead and wrote an extra chapter last night. I want to finish this so I can move on to the next one, but it will sure be sweet to end this work after nine years. I've changed part II's line about 'the hotline red' because I try to avoid inverting my words. I'm also fond of saffron, such a vibrant shade. I want my readers to carefully read Parts VI and VII to help them understand why the TV only stole portions of my poems. In response to the onslaught my brain has received since 6:00 pm last night, I have a question for the networks: why can't you let me feel as good about authoring my poetry as you made your stars feel for plagiarizing it? I: The Purpose The Lord thought truth was beautiful in any form or spectacle And coating it with fine veneers was starting to distort Humanity's adherence to the outermost appearance grew Which gave way to the rise of sin by falsehoods they'd export A sweet and ordinary bird expressed the best his person third His second walked the Earth in an informal one-piece cloak The call to plainness of His Word had been by all the nations heard And yet the countless multitudes had still not to Him woke Each time He gave a gift of worth to somebody of common birth As soon as glory was revealed, the devil interfered The outer shell was everything to those who held successes' string For vanity was largely how their riches were revered The use of electricity had furthered this duplicity Infusing fell illusions with a paralyzing light So that the good recipients of His divine beneficence Were overwhelmed by power and could not tell wrong from right The time had come to make a man who'd stay the course within His plan To furnish ample stamina against the evil tide He'd bless him with a gift for art and fill with love his open heart And let the spread of showy truth extend the whole world wide Excessive artificial vaunt would fail to be a source of want But only proper application of the noble skill Though fearsome ones in high employ would gather to the truth destroy They'd come up short against the force of one intrepid will He'd let him know he had a soul for which to choose a timeless goal And put the strongest arguments inside his able brain He'd give him sight to penetrate the fellow persons' inner state In order to upon the underlying meaning train He'd name him David, like the king who slew the giant with a sling And set him on the earth among the modestly sustained A paintbrush in a hand so brave was guaranteed to stir a wave But only by disruption could the greater good be gained II: The Adversary The devil treated his aides well to help him swell the ranks of Hell At least until the time arrived for each to fall below He showered them with shining wealth and kept them in the finest health Upon his loyalest, the highest honours he'd bestow His force was undetectable in persons so respectable Which let the spread of evil go entirely unchecked As laws were passed to make the need for people to indulge in greed And meet the disappointing fate that they did not expect To shield the fallen from their grief, illusions offered brief relief Which failed to keep them happy unless constantly applied For this, the new technology employed a slick psychology From which the most determined would find difficult to hide The worldly dream of zillionaires was passed off to the crowd as theirs To reinforce the glory that would otherwise soon drop And those who had the greatest means to dominate through TV screens Were rated by the devil as the flower of his crop Though other painters by the lake had chosen to a landscape make Would David turn his easel round to face the other way And render a subjective look at shoppers on the banner's hook Their megamall depicted as a crushing beast of prey His daring ingenuity and capable dexterity Won favour from the passers-by who praised him for his work It left him feeling tranquilized to be so strongly patronized Oblivious to enemies who in the throng might lurk The saffron hotline's special ring awoke the chairman with a spring To answer an important call from down in the abyss An artist with a bent for truth was openly corrupting youth With images designed to throw their programming amiss It ceased with a despotic shout to snuff the brazen upstart out Or suffer for his failure a disturbing penalty The influential Mister Large would to the target hands discharge Once weaknesses were gathered by a thorough inquiry III: The Temptress Profound effects upon the brain were visited by Mary Jane Incentivizing centres that provoked the urge to laugh Her company came at a fee too high for those in poverty But for the artist she agreed to lower it by half He'd had a pressurizing day and recognized her straightaway Her flowing, viridescent wrapping flapping in the breeze She emptied his collection plate and offered him a soothing date Extending warm and leafy arms to set his mind at ease The picture he'd been working on was seen to him as going wrong He wanted better to make contrast of the bad to good But once he gained a sniffing sense of Mary Jane's rich redolence He realized that all his shades were set down as they should Her orders were to trip him up, so his advance would interrupt Diminishing his image with the laugh of a buffoon And on his work she kept her eye, alert for tricks that she could try As they enjoyed the fading of a sunny afternoon He had an animated way to certain things that he would say Reflexively a smirk came on her at the sight of him Especially when overrun by passionate opinion His eyes would more protrude against a semblance fiercely grim Succeeding to subdue his wit, she seized upon the laughing fit To plant a comic moustache on the figure that he'd drawn But found herself too unprepared for the expression that he shared Incredulous with outrage by his flawless vision gone Hilariously overpowered, she fell hard against his glower Soon reduced to spasms that relinquished her control So that she had to turn her back and put an end to her attack Abandoning at once her incapacitating goal The word of the decisive loss was sorely taken by the boss He'd thought for sure he'd triumph on the first submerging strike The evil effort to debauch would have to be moved up a notch To strengthen the assault upon his victim's peaceful psyche IV: The Blighters The blighters were a tiny troop of creatures who knew how to snoop To catch their prey asleep or stuck in horizontal slumps They knew just where to poke the bill and drilled for nourishment until The surfaces they worked on were all blanketed in bumps They'd been dispatched to David's bed to play their havoc with his head By someone on the payroll of his dedicated foe And there they waited in the dark for the right time to make their mark His constitution destined for a prickling new low Their last forlorn recipient, to demonstrate his discontent From finding studded chaos in his sagging belly's fold Had finally to pieces fell, and with a madly plaintive yell Went crashing through his window to explode on concrete cold Since this one was without the weight to help him from them insulate His sure and rapid breakdown was the outcome they presumed As shock waves of approaching feet to cushy recess forced retreat By signalling the entrance of the person they had doomed Exhaustively he'd combed the street to find a few small things to eat Resulting in a somewhat better than the normal fare A patch of earth contained a crumb and someone dropped a pack of gum And juicy yellow dandelions sprouted everywhere To make sure his nutrition stuck, into a bowl he dumped the guck And fortified it with a squirt of Elmer's safety glue Then with a clothes pin on his nose, to gaping mouth the mixture rose Surrendering the gullet it was bound to travel through His demon hunger held at bay, he headed for his bed to lay Collapsing from the drain of his humiliating run To motionlessness he'd concede before the bugs came out to feed Led by the pathway of the most enthusiastic one The straw from which it took its drag induced a deep and fitful gag Which sent the others fleeing through the crack beneath the door Again the shot had landed wide as Mister Large his foulest cried Determined to crush this resilient artist even more V: The Masterpiece For any artists worth their salt, obliterating vision's fault Was foremost the objective with their basic needs denied A finalizing master stroke that boundaries of beauty broke To blissful revelations flung the portal open wide Though David barely made a cent, his time had not been poorly spent Developing his palette to a formidable crest Consumerists might think him flawed, but deemed successful by his God He'd struggled long to make of his abilities the best His painting of the modern age, presented as a flimsy stage Whose listless players edged towards the entrance of a shaft Which led straight down to iron jaws expanding to make good their cause Had heretofore been viewed by him as bordering on daft But with a touch to emphasize the evil in the usher's eyes The elements united in a composition grand With power to undo the grip of television's blinding trip And trigger major consequences utterly unplanned He'd set up in a public place to reach this echelon of grace His first spectator dazed by the illuminating sight The driver readily discerned the treatment his exploiter earned And felt his indignation surge to a ferocious height His spirit soared with violence against the haughty insolence Of tyranny that wasted his duration lived entire And in a frenzy of delight, as his observers flinched with fright He torched his boss's vehicle and danced around the fire The officers sent to address the ladies' summons of distress Approached the witness for his summary of the affair And shown the painting to explain, the detonation blew again With two more dancers firing their pistols in the air With that, the artist shed his smock to put up the essential block To stop the scene descending into hopeless disarray And exited towards his hood as nonchalantly as he could Where his incendiary work would in concealment stay VI: The Networks Appearances warp how we think and may play to enlarge or shrink Especially when by a mighty corporation cast Since Mister Large was running late on sealing David's tragic fate The networks were assigned to it and ordered to work fast The advertisers ran campaigns that ridiculed the painter's brains The media dismissed him as a paltry little speck The writers fervently repealed the truth his images revealed Combining on the strides he'd made and holding him in check Among the talent were a few who envied his enlightened view To such a level that they'd gladly join in the rebuff And use their status to donate more fury to the tide of hate To further the acclaim of which they never had enough Their push for such an ill effect elicited the disrespect That brought a thief to make off with the life-work from his room The masterpiece was tucked away but all the rest were on display By greedy hands unfastened and about to meet their doom The thief decided he would be the hero of their treachery Supplanting his smug face as the collection's rightful source His bid for worshiped vanity, though rooted in insanity By shallow network standards was the fittest to endorse He took the paintings on a tour and let their virtue, plain and pure A global crowd of fans to his delusion's way deceive Adopting the same name as Christ, his signature grew highly priced Until in his divinity he started to believe Surrounded by his pretty wives, he opened up the new archives Donating it a portion from his store of precious loot As far as he could theorize, the way to Heaven was with lies His name on canvasses he stole and fame beyond dispute With that which had their rule defied now operating on their side The networks made a fortune as their apprehensions eased The public firmly in their spell, to throw the victim in a cell Would ratify their fraudulence and make their master pleased VII: The Crisis From David's end, the interlude, since cut down by the crime so crude Consisted of a growing chorus howling for his hide From those that used to kudos pay and tell him he'd be big one day As though they'd never watched him working, standing at his side They swaggered by him in a group as he stood waiting for his soup To mock his sad condition and add insult to his shame The women who'd once stood agog now talked down to him like a dog And even children had a go at his peculiar name The sorry soul was mystified as to the blitz against his pride His mean detractor's party stipulating to exclude The thought of years of work he'd lost inclined his body to exhaust As well as being rather detrimental to his mood And then a well armed escort barged to take him downtown to be charged With cameras behind them linked directly to the news For paintings he'd been said to claim that as their Jesus' were the same When of his own accomplishments he had but one to choose The frilly fool in hat and tail who'd come to watch the trip to jail Was he who'd thwarted God's fine plan to glorify the plain Directing to the walls he'd stripped as dubiously unequipped He asked the poor bewildered artist if he could explain Extracting from a yawning groove as lenses zoomed to folly prove The suspect held his masterpiece up for their eyes to know And carried by the network's beams, their own collapsing at the seams The total globe to feral pandemonium would throw The fraud was grabbed and turned on ear, the field technicians smashed their gear The firemen were called and on the caller turned their hose The elephants inside the zoo were loosed to see what they could do As outside network headquarters, an angry mob arose The military sent their tanks to use against the stores and banks Their cannons blasting holes through which the plunderers could pour As Mister Large's ending loomed, by penthouse walls, a man entombed The crisis reached a pinnacle that he could not ignore (to be continued)
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© 2007, 2016. Verses by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.