is it the poet’s purpose
to deliver doses of truth
that awake sleepers and set
fires in their bellies
or
should the poet
sculpt beauty from the empty
space of a blank page
leaving no trace?
truth and beauty
revolution or aesthetics
prophecy or pilgrimage?
we huddle in to
each-other-warm
where one body wont suffice
gather round tables
as though to worship
a lazy susan
plow food into our faces with
sticks and laugh at
failed attempts to evangelize
reminisce the future
leadership, change, adjustment
as i sit with
prophet,
businessman,
preacher,
manager,
pastor,
researcher,
sharing table, susan, bowl, meat, bite
and love(mixed)jokes(dreams)
tomorrow i’ll leave this behind
them behind
to pick up where i set down
two days from now
i’ll wish it was two days from then
and that i could be back here
in my drab, too small cubicle
eavesdropping on my co-workers’
impotent, constant complaints
because anything is better
than watching a mother
whose lost her only son;
whose lost her future grandchild;
whose lost her hope
in her loss of everything;
everything that matters;
everything that gets her out of bed;
everything that gives her purpose
to face a day in which she will know
that she’ll never again
talkseetouchhugkiss
her son again
and that she’ll never have
another chance.
The world has a way with itself, sometimes
and in that way the rest of us get
trampled
left for dead under the stamping feet
of the universe
Years pile on years pile on age and all
the lyrics in the world can’t
STOP
the sun from spinning out in space
and us spinning around it
And for the life of me I just can’t
put my finger on the reason
that we all eventually get out of bed
every morning
But we do
And maybe that’s just it.
Maybe that’s the truth that keeps concepts
of emptiness at bay. I
want to live. You
want to live. We
will live together,
on this rock, we will rock
And every morning we will roll on to
the floor of our bedroom, alarm clock be
Damned.
We will step out of the front door
from a hot shower and a cold bagel
and we will go where we will be
and when we finally get home
too late to crank the stereo too loudly
there won’t be anything keeping us up at night,
because here we are.
Let’s do it.
the sieve and the sand 