by Bill Blick
You glimmering in the rain
You again
You shimmering, gleaming, amongst the streams of water and beams of light
Amidst the junkies on the corner
And the choir of worms in the alley
Thunderbird wine spilling down in the gutter
I utter my futile protest
I will go down with this ship
I will sink like a stone
I will jump on the grenade
And come up all alone
Snip snip snip
Edit the film
Skip, skip, skip to the good parts
The bad guy in a ten gallon hat
The midnight crooners full with all their glory
This is the story of the man behind the anthem
The march to liberation beyond the deceitful
Trappings of a bygone era funneled through
The mouthpiece hipster
In disbelief we watch creation go down in
A flaming nocturnal emission
Don’t look too soon and don’t gaze into the light
I long for
Sunlit beaches of Galapagos untouched
By corruption of big city
None of your business, big business
Mind your own business, business
And head home again
Drink the whiskey
Swill the ale
Forsake your riches
Forsake yourselves
No one cares
Anymore
About dignity
Does anyone remember dignity?
Or is it distant roar from the bottomless
Well
A rumble from underneath the reality TV set
Remember truth
Truth like a flaming arrow
Truth like a blunt instrument
A spoon to spoon out the frivolity and triviality
Of wayward existence
Am I talking to you or
Kim Kardashian’s press agent
You again glimmering in the goddamned rain
Is it you?
I mean you
I mean really you
Not a sound bite in a presidential campaign
Is it you,
Not the military police of political correctness
Weeding out everything for a false utopia
There is Hades in the bottom of a Cap’n Crunch box
There is brimstone and fire under our beds
We need only read the newspapers
And see what they want us to see
Doesn’t anyone use the cerebral cortex anymore
Don’t the tigers eat their young
Men in blue suits cannibalize our generation
And spit out all hopes of redemption
But I say there is hope
In every word that breaks the silence
In every person who chooses the individual thought
Over bitterness, cruelty, indifference
In every person who reaches out seeking to console
Instead of devouring every lost shred of evidence
Of humanity, of truth, of love
Diamonds in the rough you say
One in a million you pray
Bastards grind you down
You say
Don’t let the bastards grind you down
They do it with whiskey and heroin
They do it with god and church
They do with politics and correctness
They do by isolating the poet
The true poet who stands before the job market
And can’t fit in to make ends meat to eat
Who can’t breathe
Who can’t exhale
Who can’t raise his kids
Who can’t love life
Who can’t eat with loved ones
Who can’t exist without a preexisting condition
Don’t give up us, man
Who
The ones who see that it doesn’t take a fist and gun or facebook page or linkedin profile
Or a million dollars
To be human
All I want is to exist
And for this I must bet my head to the devil
And hope the roulette wheel comes up on red
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