Improv, Week 3

Poem: “Thoughts on One’s Head” by William Meredith

A person is very self-conscious about his head.
It makes one nervous just to know it is cast
In enduring materials, and that when the real one is dead
The cast one, if nobody drops it or melts it down, will last.

We pay more attention to the front end, where the face is,
Than to the interesting and involute interior:
The Fissure of Rolando and such queer places
Are parks for the passions and fears and mild hysteria.

The things that go on there! Erotic movies are shown
To anyone not accompanied by an adult.
The marquee out front maintains a superior tone:
Documentaries on Sharks and The Japanese Tea Cult.

The fronts of some heads are extravagantly pretty.
These are the females. Men sometimes blow their tops
About them, launch triremes, sack a whole city.
The female head is mounted on rococo props.

Judgment is in the head somewhere; it keeps sums
Of pleasure and pain and gives belated warning;
This is the first place everybody comes
With bills, complaints, writs, summons, in the morning.

This particular head, to my certain knowledge
Has been taught to read and write, make love and money,
Operate cars and airplanes, teach in a college,
And tell involved jokes, some few extremely funny.

It was further taught to know and to eschew
Error and sin, which it does erratically.
This is the place the soul calls home just now.
One dislikes it of course: it is the seat of Me.


Revision:

The self conscious hum, a quizzical glance at the big toe
and wondering still, what its purpose may lead. Does death
call to you so nonchalantly? Casting the eye upon its bulbous
mass, a disfigured finger would have sufficed. Rarely are
you able to play majestically on the piano with such gusto,
always in the way, always. You stubbed your toe just two
days ago and cursed its existence when the toe, in fact, was
always meant for stubbing and cursing. We pay so much attention
to its blank gaze. Remember when you were so young and you
thought your father a sadistic torturer?
Every time your tooth was loose, he would tie the thinnest
string upon that same toe, tie the other end to your tooth
and make you giggle with his good buddy grace until
you pulled the tooth out in one quick swipe. What was
so wrong with that you asked? You could doll it up. French
tips I say. You retort with such vehemence, that judgment
day will come and we will all be buried in silhouetted shoes,
hiding, always hiding, the reason why we could never see
the one error of our bodies, that one flaw to our forming.