ON THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MOVE BOMBING

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