Them

Them. 
You know, them: 
the women and men
too many friends 
follow the trend
as the lines converge 
on the grass verge 
where the highway ends.

I am making amends,
nothing to spend
and nothing I want to buy.
Making it worse is some kind of curse for me,
it isn’t the verse you see,
it’s the scheme and the theme…
So many poets bore me,
it’s a chore for me to read.
I need you to speak to me — 
speak through me —
speak for me — 
lend me your ears to hear for me,
stick me with truth,
so when I wake up
thick head with all you said,
all I read,
the world glitters for me.
It’s on me, it’s on you
to hear and to see and to do…
them.

You know, them:
the women and men
too many friends
follow the trend
as the lines converge
on the grass verge 
where the highway ends.

One reality,
many interpretations
are there to sow doubt
in the veracity.
Where’s the sincerity?
You taking? You making?
Who’s losing? You choosing?
This festering wound
needs no interpreting.

We all got no-account ancestors,
or men with horse and saddle,
people tending cattle in the good years.
But now we sit down
in a town full of rocks turned to air;
Stupid and evil
magicians cast weevils in bread
and lock up the poor:
my beautiful brothers
and sisters of all human hue
poets of nations
you can see we are royally screwed
by monarchs and bankers
oligarchs ….
Fill in the rest.
They feather their nest
and we freeze.
The nation is down on its knees,
ground up for the heat they need.

Them.
You know, them:
the women and men
with too many friends
again and again
follow the trend
as the lines converge
on the grass verge 
where the highway ends.

11/12/22