“ODD TALES & WONDERS”

THE LORI (revised)

© Travis Edward Pike  All Rights Reserved

They're gone.  You won't find a single one.
They've been extinct for some time.
Oh, every so often you'll hear one survived
In some wild and exotic clime,

But it's nonsense, pure and simple.
They've been gone for many a year.
Demand a more detailed account and you'll see
Just how quickly they all disappear.

Hence, I'm quite certain there are none left.
They've all perished and gone,
But they did exist, some time ago,
In a distant, clearer dawn.
Their trade was in the arts and crafts —
Their sculpture beyond belief.
Their paintings and illustrations
Brought the abstract to bold relief.

Actors, they were, and writers,
Composers beyond compare,
And architects and weavers
And musicians with music to share.

Throughout the world, their poetry enhanced,
In most ingenious ways
Both common ideals and the wisdom of kings,
In those golden, forgotten days.
No single horn sounded a warning,
When the earth began to buck
And the seas, to rise toward burning skies
On the day disaster struck.

Winter on winter with never a sun,
Their forests all stripped and bare, 
Their herds all dead, no corn for their bread,
A world of dread and despair

Beyond their most awful imaginings,
Beyond what their craft could forestall,
Beyond all the arts of their glorious race,
Far beyond any reason at all!
Then on came War, all blood and gore,
Pestilence, on a famished steed,
Death rode triumphant in their wake
And leading them all was Greed!

Dark ages, then.  Men surrendered their souls
And turned to plunder and war.
What little we learn of the Lori is found
In myth and fable and “lore.”

And so, in the end, it has fallen to us,
To pick up the torch and go on.
Our own values and ethics, desires and dreams
Must define us.  The Lori are gone.

An early version of The Lori was published in OPUS 17, Spring Quarter, Vol. 9 No. 2
© 1973 by the Media Board of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA 91768

In 1972, Stormy Forest Records optioned "THE LORI" for a TV Special and recorded my "coffee house performance" at the old MGM recording studio on Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood.  When the option lapsed without result, I exercised my GI Bill to go "back to school" at Cal Poly, Pomona in Spring of 1973. That same year, I offered "The Lori" and "The Peerless Goth" to the school magazine, which published them with the understanding that the only rights granted were for the single publication and that all other rights, including the copyright, would remain my property.  It was an unusual arrangement, but then, I was an unusual scholar!
— Travis Edward Pike, 2008