The distant crystal forests are burning
Paper parasols roll abandoned along dirt roads
Below black locust she just stands weeping
As each new wounded petal of life unfolds
A former friend whispered to me of your book
You're intent to inform the world of my sins
I barely recall those cyclic dioramas in which
You swore we two were forever friends
Ambulance lights ablaze on brick-lined nights
Fistfights erupt down every other alley cut
They say life's easy enough round here for those
Smart enough to keep their fool mouths shut
They keep slitting all the senator throats
In rarified palaces of conceit and dark powers
No one really wants to live forever, at least
Not those looking down from the castle towers
Sneering master's got his leather whips
Every slave girl's got thin, whiter scars
Drunken frat house boys all get their kicks
Blasting crude rap music from their speeding cars
From the stony hills of Gettysburg to the
Windy highlands and hardscrabble Scottish moors
Dead winds blow sour and unfeeling except for those
Looking to even up centuries of uneven scores
In this land of plunder and murder we barter
For fresh sensation with the spoils of bloody war
The meek inherit what's been condemned and burn
Old carcasses that luck deposits on the shore
She drinks too much to numb the closeness of
Accumulated nights of ripped nightgowns
Strolling among the graves of slaughtered children
All the headstone cherubs circled in thorny crowns
20090530
Wheels of Being
Copyright © 2009 Ernest Bloom.
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"Crystal forests are burning." And that's when you know the end of the world is night--the precious things in life fall to ash.
ReplyDelete"She drinks too much to numb the closeness." Wow. Such honesty and angst.
"Slaughtered children." Heart-wrenching.
This is Shiro, just so you know--
ReplyDeleteBut I like this. A lot. It's a lot of strong images all smashed together in even stronger words. Very cool.
Oh glory, glory- this is nigh uncanny. Ambulance lights ablaze, parasols rolling and those boys blasting crude rap music- that was too, too cruel a shock, that.
ReplyDeleteThe senator part was particularily perturbing. I'm not sure if I interpret it right- but the senators are those not afraid to speak their minds, and the price is deadly, literally. The image of Harvey Milk comes to mind although he is more a victim of madness than 'democracy'.
The sneering master with a whip further evokes the paradox- we live in democracy- but isn't it a sort of mass tyranny where indiduality is rewarded by lynch?
"from hills of Gettysburg...to Scottish moors"- I love this line- it extends the speaker's sentiments to the whole world and, incidentally, extends the message to the world in general. Now, that's a cross-cultural feast if I may say so myself. America and Europe unite! We should think of a new hymn for our little International Union- that Ode to Joy is so nastily discriminating.
The rhyme and rhytm are sublime, even more so than the previous pieces of yours I read. The piece seems extremely polished and technically masterful but by far no pedantic show-off. No, this has soul and mind converged into one passionate, trans-continental torrent!
Headstone cherubs circled in thorny crowns- what a positively disturbing ending note- the kind that keeps echoing in your skull for a long, long time. The kind of ballad to make you think, laugh, or cry depending on where you stand.
oh you people. this is like something i would have written 20 years ago. idk what it's about or what it 'means,' but i was asleep at work when i wrote it perched up on a benchtop between two hematology analyzers sith music leaking in between nodding off and on and off and on and scribbling down images and being mostly depressed. the ambulance lights keep imposing themselves since i watched _bringing out the dead_ a few days ago. abt the senators and frat boys and such, and masters and slaves, i guess i feel like we're all in a slave society that we pretend is abt democracy and such, but humans brutalize each other with unflinching consistency. took a while to figure out what order to put this whole thing in. cut apart all the original 'stanzas' and kept rearranging the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't solve at all. oh well....
ReplyDeletemiss you, shiro....get back to writing with frequency!
'with music': not the favorited playlists on darth vader's ipod. . . .
ReplyDelete