"gepetto" poems
Ah, Pinocchio--povero burattino°--
Always in a scrape; always in a jam.
The irresponsible, wooden-headed numbskull
Couldn't help but fall for every scam.
A walking, talking stringless marionette,
Pinocchio really would have had it made
In a modest home with babbo°° Gepetto.
But, instead, the foolish youngster strayed.
Ignoring the advice of the talking cricket,
Pinocchio EVEN smashed it with a hammer.
That right there should have been a reason
To throw the little rascal in the slammer.
The Fox and the Cat had no trouble
Dissuading the puppet from going to school,
Thus involving him in a series of adventures
Which often made him look like a fool.
The Fairy tried to be a good influence,
But Pinocchio's lies caused his nose to grow.
Constantly ignoring responsibilities,
The misguided boy, suffered constant woe.
(Swindled of his money, hanged on a tree,
And saved just in the nick of time
From being eaten, Pinocchio had
Too many adventures to fit into this rhyme.)
Fleeing with his lazy school chum Lucignolo
To the Paese dei balocchi,°°° there Pinocc
Turned into a donkey. Of all his follies,
This one had to be a masterstroke.
Once again a puppet, Pinocchio was swallowed
By a giant Pesce-cane,°°°° and then guess what!
The foolish boy was finally reunited
With babbo Gepetto in the fish's huge gut.
NOT until Pinocchio thought about others
And proved he was an honest and caring boy
Did his fortune start to change for the better,
And the stringless puppet became the real McCoy.
Does Pinocchio by any chance remind you
Of any politicians out there at all
Who fail to listen to expert advice
And thumb their noses at common protocol?
And speaking of noses, we can also see
Politicians' noses grow as they tell lies.
Lying to themselves and to others as well
And ignoring our best interests and flouting compromise.
Such politicians--unlike Pinocchio--
Have strings to pull when performing for the masses.
The more they avoid solving REAL issues,
The more they end up looking like *****
They also love--these clever burattini--
To sell a bill of goods and promise many things.
But someone out there--or some corporation--
Is slyly and cleverly pulling their strings.
Do you ever wonder if these same politicians
Ever think about or care how you feel?
Will they eventually--as did Pinocchio--
Prove they have what it takes to be real?
°(burattino/i) - poor little puppet
°°(babbo) - dad(dy)
°°°(Paese dei balocchi) - Playland
°°°°(Pesce-cane) - shark
- by Bob B
Nov 8, 2016
Nov 8, 2016 at 2:39 PM UTC
I was always told to stay away from the street
Keep myself protected, redirecting my feet
The traffic rushing past would **** me deader than dead,
that's what the old folks said
But little did I know that by avoiding the cars
I wandered in the path of something badder by far
Keeping to the fences and the gardens to play
That made me easy prey
*For the houses, on the prowl
The houses, on the prowl
The windows, are a hungry scowl
And the doors are jaws to swallow you down*
Ever seen a picture of a venus-trapped fly?
Happy as a clam as if it's ready to die
Sucker for the honey never knowing it's bait
Until it's far too late
Well comfort and protection are what houses pretend
A welcome sanctuary and a fabulous friend
We lavish love upon them like they're part of ourselves
Until there's nothing else
*But the houses, on the prowl
The houses, on the prowl
The windows, are a hungry scowl
And the doors are jaws to swallow you down*
People at the window, haunted and confused
Something's got them prisoner, and it'll never let them loose
I know that you will think it's just a travellers' tale
Like Jonah or Gepetto in the guts of a whale
But they were brought salvation from the soul of the sea
And that's never come to me
Helplessly protesting at the ribs of the room
Quietly digesting in a wallpaper tomb
It's hard and getting harder to get out of the door
And the world don't care no more.
Feb 13, 2012
Feb 13, 2012 at 2:48 PM UTC
The world is vastly different when I look at everything objectively.
You and I were more than you'll ever truly understand.
You were the blue fairy
I was Pinocchio
I simply wanted to understand what it means to be a "real boy"
In the end,
I was returned to the puppeteer
In the end,
I couldn't feel for long
In the end,
My disease is my sin.
For a while I forgot I was broken.
For a while I felt real.
For a while
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 3:12 PM UTC
(Alone, I wanted love, both to be and to do...
Creation is a dangerous fling when love is on the line.)
Wood carvers' magic lies
In the carving of their knives;
Sticks of wood and cotton strings
Give hardwood imitative lives.
Always, tough, a thing is needed,
Or the living and the dead move only
In surreal dance, a lifeless reflection;
The dead must imitate the living.
Somehow string life is never quite enough;
True love must choose to stay...
To dance a half step slow or quarter fast,
To jive against a jink and twirl an unexpected twirl.
And so I cried each night and prayed
For genuine, not wooden love,
And life arose in wooden hands;
Pinnochio was born, and stood
Wobbling on wooden feet, but living.
Full joy I felt, to see my son,
My own creation, moving on his own.
Then he, like any living boy, began to run.
Some say a loss is better if love comes first;
Some say it's better yet, to be alone.
Seeing both, I can't determine which is best...
Pinnochio, Pinnochio, my wandering son,
Remember me, your father, and come home.
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 10:50 AM UTC
I am my father
Not metaphorically though
I carved myself from a block of Alder
I am my own Gepetto
I am the prince of my kingdom
This entire homeland of the unsteady
Where I can be proud I am from
Set to inherit all that I have already
This hurts me more than it does you.
Damn my faults, I run into the forgiving arms
of the long-lost ego, the prodigal id
So, you can spare me your false alarms
I’ve known nothing else since I was a kid
I’ll put myself in a home when I reach old age
I hope to relive my youth through my own life
I don’t want to see me make the same mistakes I made
I’m sharpening a knife with a knife
I have handed down to myself all I have learned
I’ve worked for all my respect I’ve earned
This hurts me more than it does you.
The hardest ways, are the ways I’ve learned
I played with fire and I got burned
This hurts me more than it does you.
I’ve seen your world and I know it turned
I have the things you should have yearned
This hurts me more than it does you.
I am an amazing thing that you just spurned
I waited and waited and you never returned
This hurts me more than it does you.
I am aware of things you never discerned
Tell me why you aren’t concerned
This hurts me more than it does you.
…And that’s what makes me better than you.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
A combination of solo acoustic guitar solo,
and dubstep trap hop electric heavy metal,
never settle,
because I’m never settled,
have always felt more judged than more loved,
ever since I was called black by the Kettle,
cut your nose off,
if it grows like Pinocchio,
no strings on me though,
nope no Gepetto,
no fairytales,
no cartoons no make believe,
just me alone and us together,
in this Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,
and I love you,
whatever that means,
just trying to stay awake long enough,
to make it to another night of dreams,
hold me,
but don’t keep me to close,
see I want to want to want you,
but I’m too high to fly anything except solo,
a combination of solo acoustic guitar solo,
and dubstep trap hop electric heavy metal,
never settle,
because I’m never settled,
have always felt more judged than more loved,
ever since I was called black by the Kettle…
∆ LaLux ∆
Los Angeles, CA.
October 10th, 2018
Oct 11, 2018
Oct 11, 2018 at 12:18 AM UTC
I look into the mirror
And I lose myself
I blink and yes, that's me.
Is it really?
I look a little fake,
My paint's cracked and flaked
Off at the front, my eyes have lost their colour
And my mouth's all wrong.
I thought I had brown hair,
But what's that black and white
Slate I see, staring back at me?
Am I copy of the real thing?
Gepetto, I want to be a real boy,
I feel like nothing more than a toy.
Sep 14, 2021
Sep 14, 2021 at 12:13 PM UTC
The acquisition of a son
With an adequate corporeality, albeit with certain caveats,
Certain limitations in terms of progeny and posterity,
Had awaken something in the old man,
Certain forces leading him to the altar
And, subsequently, to the nursery once more
(A second son, brought to bear in the established manner.
With a minimum of drama and fanfare.)
The child was loved, in a rudimentary fashion;
While his flesh-and-blood bona fides were beyond question,
He was a consumer, a thing of constant need
More akin to a hardship than his celebrated half-sibling,
Whose command of the spotlight
Served as a gravitational pull for parental affections.
The old man passed on after a spell,
Hanging on long enough for his second son
To stumble onto the precipice of adulthood
(His mother had hot-footed it out
Almost immediately after the burial,
Choosing to stage-mother her feted stepchild)
Though his fatherly wisdom
Was limited to matters of his craft, his business,
Which was left to the young man, though grudgingly at that,
As a sop, a means of getting shet of two unwanted encumbrances.
He’d proved to have much of the old man’s gift,
Whittling and carving puppets and toys and dolls
(Though with a certain grim fury making it evident to all
That the work was not a labor of love)
Rarely stopping to speak to or even acknowledge his clientele,
Except if one of them happened to repeat the time-worn chestnut
That the toy chooses the child, in which case he laughed harshly,
All but barking *It’s the purse that closes the deal, not the ****
And then he would return to carving some doll or marionette,
Which would always seem to have a certain wan look
Around the corners of the eyes, the edge of the lips,
The look of a child’s toy equipped with the foreknowledge
That it was destined for the back of some closet shelf,
The bottom of some attic-bound chest.
Aug 28, 2017
Aug 28, 2017 at 9:11 AM UTC
a whimper in the meadow
saying love like life is natural,
under trickling willows, everybody knows
that only the wind can stir this arbor
and gepetto was an outlier-
if it’s breeze that moves the world
and the still stays still til stirred,
you must be the swaying air
and this love, these words, are yours
Mar 12, 2017
Mar 12, 2017 at 1:16 PM UTC