I Hear Your Crisis

I Hear Your Crisis Scream if you have to. Scream out your guts if it’ll make you feel better. Scream out everything you have inside your spasming soul And let your tongue be numb. Scream out like a banshee All your festering frustrations; Frustrations of always losing and of desperately drowning, Frustrations of accelerating powerlessness And of deepening deprivation. Life as we know it is getting dicey in the big city. Dull-brained dopesters with tattoos Of fading flowers and dangling dragons Know the score. They know of the hopelessness They have tasted the vinegar of reckless abandon. They have seen the downcast stares Of ten thousand depressed days. I hear your crisis. I know your pain. I understand your disease. Look out this window here And notice the old Victorian house across the street. It’s a dead house now. The flowers in the garden stand slumped over And the front yard grass has faded, Faded like the faith of a million Catholics. The windows are creased and cracked, Like the bulging buttocks of a dozen whiskey *****es. And there are genuflecting ghosts Of long-dead children in the closed-up chapel; The cross of Christ is covered with burlap now. I hear your crisis. Scream loudly dead children of the night. Scream out your guts. Because I know your pain.