To advocate, to witness this that one true art
for it flourishes always in the beginning
elevates and reflects the good life on Earth
circles back through thick and thin intoning hope
in case there happen to be even one other survivor
who struggles against the darkness still breathing.
Back track the rational slipping in its own blood
boot with excuses in order to seize, in order controlled,
Yet Poetry, inexplicably ancient, as young as love
releases the captive bird into the Heavens above
gives back the down trodden what was from them stolen
covers a lot of ground these days buried deep in totems.
Give me a nightmare to wake the people screaming
Like new born babes who breach the toe hold
Way out beyond the second guess all told
Give us your name now and again once and for all to hear
Under the dearth of the wind a wing to carry our slain
And the children our shoulders so we won’t kill no more.
As if in our insistence on reality and force we are
Hiding something more or less a failure of nerve
Sacrificing life for time and ignoring the fix we’re in
Over our heads, the oxygen mask stuck to the bureau mirror
In a Motel 6 on Route 66 the veneer wearing thin
Pleasure and pain red handed seemed likely a rich blend
Make me a panic attack last gasp effort to fill in the blanks
That this nation agog sees the light at the front of
the locomotive bearing down on it from the
Out of the pitch dark where the devil sleeps ‘til noon
Tell me your name one more time though the dimensions
Are turned inside out and has us play just to huff the fumes.
Anointed with in the first bars lights out of hedged bets
Bandied legged brand at birth and birth marked thorns
In the side of a comfortable world and its happy
Death heads balloons faced one two step away from being
Popped the neck down seemly uglier by gaps in intelligence
Gathering preferring rarer fruit and arbors that festoon
The melon tainted dawn tipsy on first loves no matter
How old in truth today, the 8-track cued, and chalked up
To the usual spooks through the one room
Schoolhouse of stocks, checks, and balanced windows we
Stared wide eyed as the holy unbeknownst mood, save from
Our peers, bent over a river on the far bank and drooled
Deep our stripes still caught the drift while we never forgot
To waive goodbye but then never looked back because it was
To seek them who spoke up for us once before the judge.
A face at the window candle braced or a hand as if come
Out of the blue that lifted us oft the assassinating street
And brought us back to where peace had turned sand tuned
Mandolin and drugs to keep us focused on our place
In the book on the edge of the struck forward words peaked
Out of their wine skins and idioms running for help behind
The fence revealed a baseball diamond broken on a wheel
And plaster tortoises on their backs sunning their manifests
But the sun was going down under the knife of hash science
With corporate management lined up in the ultimate
Gun- case as far as the children’s hair stood up on end
None of whom were wary enough or knew too much despite
The game were cut down disremembered in the own midst
Of their play so the papers checked in the last uniform to take
Out the demolition derby a billion fingerprints clog the drain.
Who are you working for in the short in the long run
From where I stand its mystifying how you do your sum
Who do you work for ink washed body hung with paper
Tigers, straw dogs having made overtime in the shade
Apathetic to a fault, a pill for every doubt they never let you
Out into the scoured air where wide open lots that are
Nearly lost forever by the Church of Warner Bothers
Just so they can have their way with you when you think
Because you’d be trained to bark worse than your bite
Osage can you saw a woman in half or a child in two
By the Bomb’s unlimited wants, unlimited spite
even twenty years gone off the helicopter delivers on cue.
Frank W. Walsh - Phillly