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                         Underground eXperts United

                                 Presents...

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         [  Zula Betula  ]                             [  By Cindy  ]


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(Zula Betula)

My mother was a hippie
in a time when they weren't en vogue.
She lived in a part of the world
that wasn't a safe abode.
In Berlin, she stayed
until the fall of the wall,
when the hectic tidings of new freedom
no longer beckoned her call.
After which time she moved from the city
to a place called Manchuria.
She met my father, King Hotem of Totem,
the royal legion of Nigeria.
Together, they formed a legion of their own,
work that made them slap-happy,
and they called me Zula Betula Mabel
the dapperest of the dapper-dappy.
What dapper-dappy was,
I never knew, until now.
It seemed such a terribly arduous feat
that pined across my brow
to make some sense of a hippie's mind
combined with a royal crown.
But, they called me this thing for as long as I could tell
when my ears had developed sense,
and there wasn't a more dapper-dappy child,
as was their pretense.
They held high esteem to the fact of my being,
that they had created my presence
and, in return, I was thought of and for,
regarded only for my silence.
An experiment, it seemed, that had gone so far as
to disallow a thought of my own
until the fairest king of the kingdom came
and crept up to his throne,
beseeching my parents to show me to him
and explain their feated life's work.
They told him of all of the things I could do,
how trained I was with a fork,
the eloquent way in which I could sign
and make funny-punnish jokes,
measure, add, count, just so accurately,
speak only whence I was spoke.
In the middle of the act, that was carefully planned
the king raised his hand to the court,
and told them to cease and desist this study,
as it was something to be abhorred.
My parents looked stunned
and shunned, as they were,
that their breakthrough
had broken their worth.
All they had wished to achieve on this day
was esteem in creating the perfect being.
Without ever thinking, their thoughts mounted up
and could count as the less spoken ills.
Wishing is one thing to pass through your mind,
but ethics are another thing, still.
Nothing can be without flaw, it is said,
and perfection is most flawed, of all.
Disgrace, that a child be trained like a pet,
a dog with tricks to be taught.
Locked up, they were, the the worst cells of all,
for ages and a day,
but, I visited them just as much as I could
and stayed as long as I could stay.
When I got the 'okay' to think on my own,
some research, I had to do
on just what exactly a dapper-dappy girl was,
and to this, I did conclude;
it seems a dapper-dappy is a thing put into words
that describes what I used to be;
thoughtless because I was trained to be so,
like the masses who follow one's lead,
a person for whom with no respect of their own
listens without questioning the source,
only desires to be one of a group
and takes the group's charted course.
Ah...of course,
I see it all now,
ever since my eyes work for me...
a dapper-dappy is one who's not himself
and if you're not that, then,
trust me,
you're never happy.

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 uXu #495              Underground eXperts United 1999              uXu #495
          Call Postcards From The Edge BBS -> telnet pfte.iirg.org
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