Popularity Contests Among the Peasants

by Paul Nachbar

Popularity contests among peasants
Peasants middle, high and low
Fishing, farming , hunting pheasants:
This is all there is, you know.

If most peasants seem to like you
Then its clear you'll do quite well
If most peasants do not like you
Most of them will give you hell.

Peasants each are always different
Each a person mid the rest:
Though they tend to from large groupings
Striving here to see who's worst or best.

Sometimes folks are very humble
Sometimes too they get quite grand
Sometimes large folks trip or stumble
Or small folks can't "understand".

Popularity contest among peasants
Sometimes rules are rather strict
Merely 'winning' can be pleasant
Or else the side effects make people sick.

Popularity contests among peasants
Losing almost always feels quite bad
Once in centuries a good thing
Beyond the wisdom of your Mom and Dad.

Popularity contests among peasants
Some seem 'good' and some seem 'bad:
Each has stories that they tell you
All families, Mom and Dad.

Popularity contests among peasants
What of all here will Endure:
What is valuable or worthless
What is rotten, what is pure?

Here there are few perfect peasants
Some proclaim there's none at all:
Deep down not positive of answers
I only know my name is Paul.

Here there are just only peasants
Peasants middle high and low:
All of them deep down 'good people"
Some stuff dangerous to know.

If the world were always perfect
I guess that I'd be perfect too:
Things which hurt me were not perfect
I seek to make a few things new.

New of course is never perfect
One must balance it with old:
Just as when one's painting pictures
There are warm colors and cold

None of course is always clever
None of course is always good:
Though I rarely proclaim "never"
In this or any neighborhood.

Here there are just only peasants
I am but a peasant too:
Sick and healthy like a peasant
Going where the peasants go.

Here there are just only peasants
Some are poor and some are rich
Some are homely, some are pretty
Some discrete and some will snitch.

I, late bloomer among peasants
No prodigy of any kind
Perhaps 'potential' somewhat wasted?
I mostly strive here to be kind.

Being most like t other peasants
I rarely reach my own Ideal
That i think is human nature
And I balance this with Real.

Popularity contests among peasants
I rarely win a single race
Sometimes in races am the Last One
Which is a relief or disgrace.

Popularity contests among peasants
Behind the middle, high and low:
No single person just an island
Some conflicts make the whole thing go.

Some race for love and some for money
Some race for nothing much at all
Some race for God or else for honey:
I race to see "who is this Paul? "

Some race for God, some race for country
Some race for good, some race for bad
I think all goals are quite entangled
Which makes me happy and not sad.

Sometimes contented by this world here
Sometimes "confessing" I am not:
A mix I think of good and bad stuff:
This world, the only one we've got.

I guess I too race here for friendship
And for the many hues of love
And for whatever forces
Both side to side, below, above.

With crazed ambition like all people
Who end up last to be the first
And getting there to be most gentle
To folks both blessed and folks cursed.

I didn't choose these situations
These situations all chose me
And with Complete Explanation
I think I finally "agree"

Although this world is often nasty
And bad and mean and quite a mess:
I do no longer utter "No' here
But finally proclaim "well, Yes.."

And if this world is mere illusion
All words but howlings in the dark
Some make more tuneful "my" confusion
And in the darkness light a spark.

Some people say this does not matter
Its all just nonsense in the dust
It could be that I'm merely stupid
But in this life I sometimes trust

And if i do sink down in darkness
In darkness sometimes not alone:
All things at end devoured by darkness
Perhaps one's happy if one shone?

A mixture here i guess of stupid
And good and bad and also smart
And too vast quantities of Nothing
That is that odd thing i call "art"

Beyond horizons mainly nothing
And nothingness produces pain
One whips up something out of nothing
And then it all falls down again.

Beyond horizons mainly silence
And place where there are no sounds
No forms, no ideas and no stories
Cold nothingness beyond all bounds.

If we here are all next to nothing
And in such nothingness we finally drown
I play my own small absurd role here
Seven billion peasants in this town.
.
Popularity contests amid the peasants
Best not suffer absolute defeat
In rich countries, you get table scraps
In other places, nought to eat.

Popularity contests among peasants
Peasants middle, high and low
Farming, fishing, hunting pheasants:
This is all there is, you know.