Collecting all manner of things,
From battered old derbies to rings,
He still couldn’t find,
It stayed on his mind,
A three-legged scarecrow that sings.
The antiquated train tunnel had not been working for years.
Paranormal researchers asked about it, but we did not encourage them.
No one I knew had seen anything strange or weird there.
I have clairaudient tendencies, and I had not heard anything.
But they insisted on trying go conjure up something.
I was amazed when I saw their completed documentary.
Because in the recesses of the tunnel there were four men
Wearing derbies, in dress coats, who came out of that tunnel.
Weirdly enough, no one else saw them including the investigators.
They are right there! I said, pointing them out to my husband.
He said, “of course they are dear.”
There is a disadvantage some days of being para-sensitive.
Palimpsests of smoky cone-rolled pages charred black from the lead of hatred laced pencils,
Assemblages rewriting peaceful philosophies from behind the blindness of fire-flooded eyes;
Nourished underground rivers of stiff minds that hang coarse like dried laundry on the line,
Demolition derbies of personal agendas colliding like sticks of dynamite beneath a cool bath;
Endowed schools of thought mindlessly led back into troves of blood soaked barren lands,
Mellifluously singing the cash register's melody for drunken bankers and bankrupt diplomats;
Once upon a time our minds only pregnant think-boxes of shooting stars with no prison bars,
Now palpable petals wilting beneath the graffiti drenched petrichor that chokes our senses;
In years smarter tonic will pierce our hearts with the healing strike of medicine tipped darts,
Until that time we can work to smolder beneath the sun-kissed rituals of knowledge and love,
Making our futures bright and golden, leaving this pandemonium as history, for our children;
August 2, 2016
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