String Theory for Puppets

Written for The Poets' United #85 Thursday Think Tank "strings".

"I'll be there...
like a puppet on a string,"
sang Sandie Shaw back in the sixties...

and so we all were are - and will be
if the scientists are right,
if the theory is correct,
if the planet and the universe,
if all that therein is, from
the ocean to a virus,
from the sun to you and me
is composed of tiny strings,
if the strings vibrate like hell,
if the strings are one dimensional
and if that one dimension
is piddlingly small
and if they're all attached -
though some of them are not -
to membranes known as branes,
if that aint quite enough to blow your brains...

It's sub-atomic particles
we're talking about here,
the things that in the sixties
were little tiny balls -
which is too low tech' for now.

But it's rather hard to argue,
so kick off yer shoes and dance
and sing with Sandie Shaw
C G G7 C
I....wonder if one day that, you'll say that, you care.
G G7 C
If you say you love me madly, I'll gladly, be there.
G G7 G G7
Like a puppet on a str....ing.

The strings are tuned to wavelengths
like the strings on a violin,
like Sandy in the sixties
when she'd open a new key
and her voice would billow out:

Just who's pulling the strings
I'm all tied up to you
But where's it leading me to?

Like a puppet on a str....ing.

I was younger then than I am now
and maybe you were too.
They didn't tell us gravity
was stranger than we knew,
was an interloper loping in
from somewhere out beyond the blue,
a dimension that we hardly thought
could possibly be true,
was not a part of us at all,
at all, at all, no, not at all!

Now we all of us are puppets
with strings that can be pulled,
but we're also made of other strings -
and so are those that pull.