We're all on a road to somewhere.
The Happiness Report
from the pagan haven
of a guarded and gated
sunny seaside resort
Machine tooled
from a block of concrete
Then deposited
upon a mangrove swamp
along a once pristine coast
Now a checkpoint
and a guard tower
cast shadows
across the lungs of nature
dying of tourist cancer
Is Love
just another
four letter word
given a death sentence?
With loud voices
taking away choices
Sometimes too little?
Sometimes too much?
Such is life
in this world of strife
Where they’ll turn
your smile
into a frown
by hanging you
upside down
from the whipping post
known as Placebo Town
Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
(edited) ~ by Bob Dylan
When yer head gets twisted
and yer mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old,
too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin’ behind
an’ losin’ yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl
of life’s busy race
No matter what yer doing
if you start givin’ up
If the wine don’t come
to the top of yer cup
If the wind’s got you sideways
with one hand holdin’ on
And the other starts slipping
and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire
needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood’s easy findin’
but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin’
and the street gets too long
And you start walkin’ backwards
though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up
as down goes the day
And tomorrow’s mornin’
seems so far away
Jesus Christ …
and the great rip-off.
It was Judas, that zealot of rebellion,
the policeman, the soldier, the politician,
and them preachers of religion,
who put Jesus Christ in his grave.
“I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.”
~ Allen Ginsberg
THE PERSISTENCE
The gleaning
seeking fallen fruit
after the harvesting
Neither sowing small
nor reaping big
The art of just surviving
Street wise shaded eyes
failing to disguise
a festering fever
of hidden trauma
Is this life but a test?
A trial by unholy fire?
Six long weeks
roaming the dry crust
of a sun burnt wilderness.
Nothing but rocks and red dust.
The hot desert winds
that flay the skin
… now murmuring,
with words broken
of souls lost and forsaken.
Best I finally surrender
upon this alien terrain
the haunted trauma
of a time I’ve tried in vain
. . . to never remember.
