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.  e Lori are gone.

In 1972, Stormy Forest Records optioned THE LORI for a TV Special and recorded Pike's "coffee house performance" at the old MGM studio on Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood. When that option lapsed without result, Travis exercised his G.I. Bill to go "back to school" at Cal Poly, Pomona in Spring of 1973, where he offered The Lori and The Peerless Goth to OPUS 17, the school magaxine for the Spring Quarter, Vol. 9 No. 2 © 1973 by the Media Board of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA 91768 that 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 his property.  It was an unusual arrangement, but then, he was an unusual scholar!

Click to hear The Lori from the 2013 Odd Tales and Wonders: Stories in Rhyme CD.

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