...Sub-Nature Boy (V2)...

There was a boy. 

A very strange enchanted boy… 

whose magnitude and 

grace of inner beauty 

was counter-balanced

by a slight of 

external repugnance.

Yes, ugliness of such  

extreme visual slander, 

that we came to know him 

not as Joseph Carey Merrick, 

but as 

“The Elephant Man.” 

Such extreme visual slander… 

And just who was it that had 

unduly cursed Joseph Merrick? 

When you looked upon his face and 

physical countenance … 

A man of such   deformity 

that he was allowed to cry 

and yet physically

could not smile. 

A man of such 

repellent appearance 

that you can only hope 

the hand he’d been dealt 

was all genetics and not that 

of a ungracious god. 

A little shy 

and sad of eye, 

but very wise was he. 

Joseph Merrick could read, write 

and conceive poetry in a time 

of mass illiteracy. 

Indeed, most of those 

who laughed and jeered at him, 

would have see the word 

‘neurofibromatosis’

as pure un-cipherable 

hieroglyphic.  

And while we spoke of many things. 

Fools and kings. 

We observe ourselves 

in the mirror, 

and say,

“Look at how fat I am. 

Look there at 

the droop in my eyelids.  

Oh, if only I could get 

the shape of my nose redone. 

If only it could be made 

to turn up    ever so   at the end. 

Perhaps then, 

someone would find me attractive. 

Perhaps then,

I’d be worthy of love.” 

The greatest thing 

you’ll ever learn.

Yes indeed, 

you fools;

you freaks; 

you kings and queens. 

The greatest thing 

           you’ll ever learn.    

Ó05 Jack Hubbell

'Tis true, my form is something odd

but blaming me, is blaming God,

Could I create myself anew

I would not fail in pleasing you.

If I could reach from pole to pole

or grasp the ocean with a span,

I would be measured by the soul.

The mind's the standard of the Man. 

A poem often quoted by 

                Joseph Carey Merrick