Jesus would be so disappointed

It is almost impossible these days to

Escape stupidity

The

Swarming masses are legion

Continually circling your carcass

Waiting for a bite

The tiniest strip of flesh

Where do you go to escape?

Closeted within the darkest corners

You can find some

Animal with a PhD

Scribbling on rocks

His mind so absolved of

Concrete and carbon monoxide

Screaming children

Chicken wings or death

That he barely exists

At all

Dig holes

Sweep streets

Write poetry

Build skyscrapers

Fight a war

Survey a million lives over a

Million days

And you cannot fail to

See you are surrounded

And here

Today

Now

It seems nullifying and true that

Nowhere on

God’s green earth will ever be

Free of

Them.

Three down

I have

Thus far

Lost only

Three of the living

That impacted upon me

Any discernable change

Not bad going I suppose

For one of my age

In this town

In this time

We are not called to arms as

Our grandparents were

Or locked in small rooms

Holes drilled in our skull

At the slightest mention of

A second voice in our head

And people laugh when I say

That the 3^rd body no longer present

Was a cat

But he was a beautiful thing

More so than most people

I’ve known before or since

People who so often 

Seem unable to remain silent and just

Be.

Cherry brandy

The cycle remains

Unchanged to any real degree

I recall the image of 5 freaks

So called by the majority

Grouped at the base of

Dark and shadowed stairwells

Drinking from small green bottles of

Stolen cherry brandy

Caps cracked off on radiators

For lack of a bottle opener

Talking and laughing and happy

Included somehow in this small

Rejected crew of misfits

Though shunned by the populists

Blondes and footballers

The strong and the confident

I see these kids

Now

Running in circles

Their minds just so

All feral

They are atom bombs

Unchecked and prime

Bouncing off one another

They reject and repel

Positive and positive

An occasional connection is made

The bond that holds

Sticks into the next year and the next

They are so in need of this feeling

Inclusion and importance and

Just to be

Part of something

The consolation

The coming reward that

I wish I could impart onto you

Is that

The artist it seems

Is often born

Of the shadows.