Art is long life is short
as is sleep as are dreams
moments expire a flash
Resolves nothing lightning
a tree a house a fire
everything up in smoke
Signals across a hill
spill out over the sky
to interpret like clouds
Proud angels up above
observe the poor devils
in their workshops as trash
Only poetry saves
common people their souls
or their belief in time
Eternal forever
spirit acts as a force
to combat empty shells
Tap the sternum to hear
an echo cold hollow
follow in the footsteps
Ignorant elders teach
us against them each war
fought won or lost a joke
Choke on the lies elders
speak in all their wisdom
cover the dead with shrouds
Arguments dishonor
the dead how they perish
in our anguish we watch
Artists unlike angels
view the horizontal
not the vertical crime
Religion unlike priests
who suffer for our sins
guilt shame they toll the bells
To proclaim to the world
death marriage unto death
weddings gossamer webs
Slip down the slope to slide
for years after divorce
no one offers a hand
Star light star bright first star
I see tonight I wish
upon a shooting star
Twelve years is long enough
to waste away a crab
with giant claw to catch
Attention opponents
observe in their battles
the crush of steel to sand
Remember when stardust
was all we knew we saw
his face a bolt a scar
Rats travel with humans
throughout our history
mutual safekeeping
Artists like The Stranglers
accepted the image
while down in the sewer
Tarnished copper his badge
worn not so clean from years
no longer a rookie
Sewer dwellers see light
like moles blinding to eyes
unaccustomed peeping
Their eyesight diminished
to scent to smells odors
in the air in the stench
Socialist reformers
assassinate the tsar
and his family the blood
Arguably long gone
never to rise again
that House of Romanov
Remember the grammar
tsar like a Nazi whore
at parties the viewer
Tarred and feathered then lynched
at a southern picnic
pick a nigger Wookiee
Artists love Chewbacca
as a starman waiting
in the sky come and meet
Rest in peace Emmett Till
not lynched sadly murdered
for a whistle the trench
Stuffed inside the river
that once beautiful boy
body battered soiled mud
Poetry speaks no words
language cannot abuse
colors the world in mauve
Oblique angles appear
in other books of verse
but I sing the body
Electric like a train
transports troops of sirens
from sea to sea I speak
Truth the whole truth bitter
strange fruit hangs from the trees
electric poles they greet
Rough sleepers with drained smiles
expressions of remorse
nowhere found their bawdy
Yawp barbaric privileged
conditioned to own truth
history without break
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