Oh king atop your throne,
Why do your silent thoughts,
Drown out your own wails and moans,
You seek respite after the wars you’re fought,
By sitting atop your gold plated loft,
Trapped within your iron scales and jewel encrusted bones,
Your scars barely tenuously clasp your skin together in a thousand slipknots,
Your crown bears an omen like the eulogy on a tombstone,
Beware the man whose life is fraught,
With the fear of losing all that he’s sought,
For that man is your king atop his throne,
Of skin crafted rugs and metal bones.
Slipknots of braided wool
lacquer the trees with the darkness of Spanish Moss
down in Kentucky hollers,
where the rules are scraped with twigs in dirt roads
to be washed away by summer storms
and trampled on by outsider's feet.
Chow dogs sleep as guard lions
with manes grown thick with tick and snarl
Purple in tongue and panting breath
with a fight in them only the heat can quell.
It's but the spirit of missionary work
that breaks the silence of family circles-
Cousins gone first, second, and third
down the holler and up the hill...
Butterflies savor every fallen apple,
in a world where nature is common place,
while the slipknots from racial inequality
stain this simple beauty
with gnarled truth and fear.
Time ticks backwards in this holler:
a place with no address,
unpaved, unkempt,
and untouched by the kindness
of humanity in progress.
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