Blue Headroom Dynamite
Like ‘Nevermore’ sketched into water by Salvador Dali
Quickly running a message up a high mast in Mali
Or Michaelangelo his genius wild, cutting a lady less forlorn
With a savior already finished with work and free from scorn
Oddyseus’ raft might have hurried home
Had it not been for the Sirens’ mercurial foam
Everyman distracted, with each passing year
And epoch of pain pouring tear upon tear
Without discerning the rhyme or the reason
Or gaining knowable time season upon season
Always the lure of fruitless eternity insipid
The body and mind empty: blood, bone and lipid
When fools or king’s would rush in where others feared
Bombs fired all round and their people were seared
In jest, a plague of doubt, a feast for Decameron’s clowns
In love, the firing flesh of sin falling down
In war, the rage of the people aimed at shadows’ night
In peace, moments too few to count, the treasure slight
Wherefore the incessant loss and vainglory
From what source the endless folly
With each generation aimless proceeding
And substantial hope forever receding
How this vague sense of emptiness and sorrow
And no real horizon to fill one’s soul tomorrow
Each city above ground falling in on itself
A cascading destruction from the continental shelf [river]
All built upon empty dreams, from false stories past
Or emptied like a dream, when the brain wakes fast
Awake to the shuddering quake of earth below
Or perhaps Earth itself, blowing up in a glow
Just like Rome to fall away at the end of time
to pass the cup, to self-destruct on the vine
From Aeneas came the Trojan horde
Yet he ate his tables instead of fall on his sword
While some chanced Paris instead
Without casting runes or checking their head
To hence or from where it could not matter
On the fat of the lamb each gentile growing fatter
Over the centuries, the meaning of things or remorse
Grew dim and stolid, owning a garden or grooming a horse
With all of the sparkling treasure and treats so kind
None could fathom true nature’s curse, or pay it any mind
Copyright © Leroy Baker | Year Posted 2020
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