As part of UC Davis' celebration of 30 years of Eggheads, Trevor Bashaw, creative writing MFA candidate and associate instructor of English, was asked to write a poem inspired by the famous public art. Bashaw shared his poem during the Robert Arneson Eggheads 30th Anniversary Launch Party at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art on April 4.  

Read the full poem below, as stylized by the author, and learn more about Arneson and the history of the Eggheads at eggheads.ucdavis.edu.

egghead ballad 

by Trevor Bashaw

one of them was always watching but could only laugh 

two pairs of them could only argue 

one could only look at the stars 

one could only stare at a book 

humpty dumpty sat on a wall 

egg head is a regular shape 

the egg with its guile resists metaphor 

cracks indicated a coming evolution 

they could not be dismantled only transformed 

you could buy the resulting detournements  

one wore a pink and orange knitted hat 

all of them were palimpsests 

they were bald men once 

ellipses, planets orbiting around the stars 

we thought they were making fun of lawyers but they were making fun of all of us 

their roundness attracted to the certainty of walls 

their shells furrowed when the drums played 

eggs sweat, faces glisten 

silently they defend freedom of speech 

jumpstarting the region’s economic development 

the egg would share its luck  

if treated kindly 

otherwise they would as biometric scanners and sell the resulting data 

like all property they could be cleaned and refurbished and put back to proper use 

mostly they urged critical thought: 

in fact to egg can mean to urge, so in a way they were all begging us to think–or maybe  

asking for fellatio (egg head egg head)  

because all language is a gonad 

one was supposed to look like a penis when viewed from above 

they must have represented the Fall from Eden 

they owed a lot to richard nixon (who popularized the word) 

pretense was of interest to them 

in 2011 one was pepper-sprayed red in its eyes  

and while emotions cannot be vandalized–even after hatching it remained in its shell 

by the stars one of them was hypnotized  

the one with his head in the clouds could only laugh at the one with its head in a book  

see, none of them were bent on pleasing 

none of us could put Humpty together again 

we hoped we would still get a good grade 

clouds pass laughing, low across the sky  

the egg a temporary coherence in space time—  

like language an egg is a brief concentration of place 

into a point of unity  

that will fragment into availability  

to everyone everywhere  

they cleaned and beautified the land  

they raised the property value 

seven saxophones serenade as 

upon shattered shell we kiss, our palms empty egg’s cradles 

we hoped we would remain safe as 

heads cracked readily against pavement 

when humpty dumpty had a great fall 

the nosebleed was easy to repair 

examination happened between them 

one could only look at the stars 

their heads were also their bodies  

so we couldn’t put humpty together again 

still we tried, rubbing the egg in circles 

our rubbing constituting a slow vandalism 

two eggs shivered under blue blankets 

their innocent eyes said to calm the soul 

but one siphoned the positive energy of passerby  

to redistribute it to those in need of smiles 

as one drank a red bull 

so it could float midair when no one was looking 

but one was watching—but he could only laugh 

after all, with eggs—there are very few serious ones 

students kissed the nuclear egg right before it was dropped 

negative references were scrubbed from the internet 

we feared them all and dropped to cement  

on our bare egg knees weeping 

as they modernized and upgraded their yolk capabilities 

and stuck around in a maintenance capacity 

they self reported on their findings,  

had no objection to visibility 

though they were imprinted with the image of the first thing they see each morning, thinking that was their mother:  

sometimes the grass, a dust mote,  

a vagabond, or even me, a fanatic 

but more often a book, the sky, or another egg:  

see, the pairs could only argue as if desire was history 

but a new one was hatching; as water hatches in a splash;  

as a face might hatch, hatch into another face  

at any phase of the moon; a new face rippling  

through shell; as the rest of the eggs stay dreaming 

in short, our heads are threaded eggs 

we are new again 

we promised to be here and here we are  

to be found, to add a head and to hear the landscape 

Learn more about UC Davis' MFA in Creative Writing.