Cheap

Life is cheap, My lifetime taught At first I cared I even fought I railed against The powers that be And tugged my chain Of liberty The word is out: We all succumb The wise, the great The deaf and dumb We’re in for it That final swing You miss the ball There goes your fling The papers keep The numbers stacked The file is deep No turning back The ticker on The TV reads, “Here are the dead; There go their deeds.” Statistic-lives Blips on a graph The Shepherd tends The dying class The romance gone In system rigged Close up, we never Looked all that big You catch the scene Down in your pew So glad it’s them this time, Not you The body’s waked The eulogy – “He was a friend To you and me – “A fine, fine father, A husband true He woulda done Anything for you.” The speeches end – Off to the bar And Sunday football – We’ll take my car Thirty-plus years One company In fifteen minutes – No memory And all your hurts And all your shocks Condensed in one Mahogany box Then down you go Into the swamp Where toads and worms Do nightly romp And on it goes Around the clock The loss and gain Like Wall St. stock No faces rear Up from the dead Identities Extricated – Yet one more loss Yet one more stiff You feel the steel Of culture’s grip And now the plague A ship of fools Where captains keep Rewriting rules We’ll never sail To perfect port Our journey long past Did abort The squall of doubt – The berg of pain – In arctic waves, Truth is disdain We’ll never know That beacon’s beam And maybe life Was just a dream A cry unheard And none redeemed And maybe life Was just to dream