Urban Blight
1
We say the word, “mental”,
like we would spit.
But there are no pills
for waking dreams;
the pills that we
could only take in dreams
to take us to another place
as yet imagined
as everything the tortured soul
could conjure.
And perhaps we are so strong
the torture
is our heartbeat.
The waking dreams
like baseball bats
might beat us
into ditches
of self-loathing,
then lie with us
the way dark friends would do
and tell us there is comfort
in familiar suffering.
We can touch the mental
like a weed
and treat it
with the swipe of energy
that only comes
when arms react
to smite the one
that would threaten them.
2
All things come to those who wait,
the adage goes
and so we do
as we are told
and hope there is trust
in the world.
But as we
twiddle thumbs
and scratch our names in wood
that never was a tree
we are the silent ones:
the kids of parents
who imagined
that what they'd heard
and spoken and done--
the slap, the strap--
would do the trick
in place of hearts
that never cared to beat.
3
“Mental Illness”
is the phrase they use
for ignorance; not knowing
what to do
or how to do it.
“I did all I could”, they say
in the face of ruin
and imagine they are right
because the cannot know
responsibility or competence
or caring.
Art is colors on a wall.
Music is notes pounded
on some keys.
God died the day
he was invented
and the children of the living
must now wander
as the spawn of negligence.
We can only hope
that somewhere souls remember
and that through the years
they grow to be an army
to claim what bodies have survived.
4
“F**k you”, I say to beauty
or anything else that passes
for conviction
or truth
or hearts we tell ourselves
that we possess.
Beauty is masturbation.
Love is the perversion
we ejaculate in darkness.
I would be glad
for one true voice
that says that heaven
is at hand
and mean the painted streets
as gray as any dawn
we'll ever see
is all we can expect.
Tell me one good cup of coffee
is Nirvana
and I'll drink it
and be thankful
to be free
of chains that bound me
to the rock of longing.
Copyright © Dale Gregory Cozart | Year Posted 2017
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