O Wallace

O Wallace, I heard, and could not believe Like the school days when things you conceived Made us aghast or grieved And anxious for the next thing up your sleeve. You were our magician Bringing humor out of no where The apparition with which things disappear And the brother I held dear. O Wallace, can it be I see you no more, friend The eggs in the fowl house stays Cartoons with Huckles, relays To Spain Town for raffles that never end And stories that slant the escapades? Chalky told me how you died In that distant Texas place Far from the frolics and our embrace. O Wallace, it seems so wrong for one so young To be already gone, some say Genius never stays long, I hold nay It's just like you to do it differently. Rigor never was forte, and now It's tough to believe in your rigor mortis Not drinking beer beneath some bough Beer drawn from cattle teets. O Wallace, the noble Thame Twickenham's child, scholar, savant, different My heart remembers you and lament Hard against your merry ways. Flame A canefield somewhere for him Ole Farmers let us honor Our prankster brother, as he would Swimming the pitch lake flood. Too mortal are the dreams of men More mortal our flesh Too far from heaven ... a little wretch In each of us ascend And seem to never make the distance back The longing heart to mend O Wallace, I pray your end Will meet us on faith's common track.