Marco Di Caprio

CHORUS

THE POET

My Muse, stay close to me.
I will sing of the open meadow,
in the intoxication of a dark wine
flowing across bright fields.

I still don’t understand
why, beside me,
there is such a vast emptiness.

From this sorrow, the song must rise,
drunk with hidden truths.

MUSE

That art you name is art no more.
You speak aloud what once lay buried.

Art stands exposed, torn wide apart,
left dead, by profanation ravished,
caught in a vast and cunning deceit,
now bent to trade in empty lies.

THE POET

Therefore, drive the merchants from the temple,
drive them out forever.
My Muse, restore true life
to song, to joy, to gladness,
and lift these lamentations
from the counterpoint within my mind.

CHORUS

O then, long live progress,
and long live the human resources
of our robotic future.

I want more money, what’s in your wallet?
I’m lovin’ it.
Taste the rainbow.

For once you pop, you can’t stop
and because you’re worth it.

MUSE

Look at the snow, laid bare in the sun;
the veil lifts,
the truth appears,
and a light begins to grow within you,
though you cannot yet perceive it.

THE POET

Now I feel a quiet loneliness,
because my words go unheard.
Perhaps it’s only that people
are always working,
with no time left
to understand the art of poetry.

CHORUS

Got milk?
This is your brain on drugs,
this is your life on sale.

The ultimate driving machine.
What’s in your wallet?

Taste the rainbow,
obey your thirst.

MUSE

Men labour evermore, and life is deferred,
an unprofitable life,
shut up in repetition,
without art,
under constraint.

THE POET

I ask, I weep, I plead,
so I don’t silence my voice,
that the old tales may rise again.

The absence of art turns millions into chirping machines
and leaves them suffering in vain.

CHORUS

Wassup?
I want my baby back, baby back, baby back.
Yo quiero Taco Bell.

This is your brain on drugs,
this is your life on sale.

Gimme a break,
gimme a break,
break me off a piece
of that Kit Kat bar.

MUSE

Now that you ask about the lack of art,
I will answer you with examples.

Teenage Mary cried:
“I have sold my soul,
and now it needs saving.”

Her will was bound.
Ignorance crowned her.
Desire fell silent.

A shrill laughter rose—
a soul thirsting for freedom,
yet refusing beauty,
finding refuge only in delirium.

Beardless Harry woke in the night,
troubled by dreams of emptiness,
struck by unseen blows.
No art reached him,
no harmony—
the absence of something higher
remained.

He climbed toward the balcony,
drawn by a distant vision,
and leapt
toward a work of art
no one had ever understood.

More could be said,
but sorrow holds the voice.

THE POET

O living diamond, now that you ask,
I cannot turn away.
I must speak
of the great affliction
of carrying this dark art within me.

I think of an old man brought low,
once a witness of faith and hope,
now forgotten.

He trusted in ease
and in unskilled physicians,
greedy for gain.

I cannot sing of him,
for all my art
comes to nothing.

CHORUS

Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean,
how white is thy thunder against the stain.

The quicker picker-upper
lifteth the filth,
yet the world remaineth unclean.

There are some things money cannot buy;
for everything else…

MUSE

This bitter torment makes me weep,
so that I can scarcely see
either ethics or righteousness.

Now only art remains with you,
to endure the turmoil
of a broken spirit.

Follow me—let’s find other sensitive, poetic souls.

But remember this:
there may be very few.
It doesn’t matter.
You and I alone
are a theatre,
small, yet enough.

So sing the message,
and let good music do the rest.