when the dictionaries stop...

‘Hollow Men’ by Owen Freeman ©

when will the last poem be heard

( for T.S. Eliot and his Wasteland )

when will the last poem be heard

when will the last word be severed

from the eternal desire of our voices

when will the last cries

ring out in the absence of bells

when will birds know to come

for our eyes without wings

scattered upon the lands

in slow desiccation

when will the last poem be a rain

without clouds without rage without oceans

to pour into the hungry mouths of rivers

when will we be an empty without time

when will we cease to be tied to clocks

along avenues of disguise beaten

close to death with sticks

and forged metal with which

we announced our mastery

over and over each other

when will the last poem be heard

like the keys rattled to a kingdom

we once knew was part

of the simple beauty of morning

when will the last poem be me

when will the last poem be you

when will the last poem see

our promise scattered like corpse flowers

rotting under the Sun

when will the last poem know

the names we once sang to each other as schoolchildren

when will the last poem be a solemn oath

of silence taken up by the wind

when will the last poem see

what the future sees carved into rock and precipice

when will the last poem be a lined stairway

when will the last poem announce we knew

all the ways to heaven without gates

when will the last poem say

here lies what used to be

here lies what used to be

here lies what used to be humanity

as we are now barren perception

lost to a kingdom without a view

lost to a kingdom without a home

lost to a kingdom with nothing new

so full of what had been

when emptied into one last poem

EJR ©