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| The Agony in the Garden, by William Blake c. 1799-1800 |
I
was caught pawning agony for ecstasy
part
1 (setting the tone)
beach-combing debris
fields for any sign
of fuck you being my name
churches in America
are
still wish-death-ing liberties and keys
despite the separate identities
the
same body assumes
when mood and Moon are
fancied algorithmic tools
engaging
the blinders
the conservatives on
tv are constrict-a-tives
the liberals are
banker strung Pollyanna(s)
we are all temporary
seasonally curled scattered
leaves
lawn carcasses for
sale in a park
we are available to
fill with an empty sort of nostalgia…
yes this was once a
pioneering land
where demanding greed
be the creed
we bleed from whatever it is we feed
with the lies we’re indoctrinated as children
to believe in
a leaf is a seeded reach that
once in awhile shimmers
a fall from grace perched then lurched back
to earth…
a swan tide of maple oak ash chestnut and elm...
I color my world to cut roots with fire and sex...
when ignorance is bliss I can steal whatever I want from you
part
2 (cutting into bone)
bloody tires and
thrown open sashes
I watch who dashes away from the wrecks
I’ve created by rigging
the stoplight
I tell you everything
but what you need to know
because knowledge is towed away
the theft is always going to be borrowed
and never gained
informing any of you
is but a glam circus come on a thon
listening to me is a
mistake
you will wake the next morning
in someone else's clothes
your voice will have
an
entirely different taste
of expressing the exhales
you will be play
acting and stretching
the audible parts of your soul
you will parse and
piece the hard creases
meant for easy packaging
you will distribute,
attribute wisdom
to painful experiences…
you will ask why…
you will come to find
it is because
you think beauty lurks beneath
the surfactant scars…
we are teeming cellular
metropolises
breeding devoured excesses
we are a dress code
honor guard
a flora bacteria culture
we are the petri dishes
on
every block by block
our
souls in hock
do
you lock everyone out
as
I do to find what crumbles
outside
the light of love
what
do you look for in the dark
I
look for
what
I might have been
what
I am now
what
once was
part
eager
part
mechanical
part
organ dependent
part
of something
greater
than anything
imagination
might have
remembered
was important
enough
to never need words
EJR
©
