[Newspoetry] Philly Kerry Rally

[emerick at chorus.net]

For William's Rally Day

Fear of deprivation progresses in impoverished thought,
fear of death slowly rises, fog of a dead anti-warrior. Mollified, fear ceases quivering, deserts its tearings;
red evening sun, impaled once itself on a failed horizon,
to seek a new life, rising, mourning, from a watery grave,
on bleak morning while mists steamed around, plush clouds.

Fear -- yes, and denials of all kinds...
so many and so often flow the denials,
I feel betrayed as to my convictions
because all I knew have forsaken me.

There was a dick, Peter, down at the Gate:
Did you know this stranger, radical man,
the peaceful one they brought into arrest?
No! No, I saw him not, nor any of his crowd.

What was he, though?  A liberal to be sure,
and, may heaven smile on us, a progressive,
perhaps -- a holier-than-thou, know-it-all --
yes, a down-right, true-blue, do-god-do-gooder.

It's more than the mind can understand,
this idea of the liberals and radicals --
they want us to feed and care for the people,
they want us to give up all that we own --
as if that were the only way to escape taxes
and death, which come for many all too soon.

I do not deny death -- I have no fear of it.
I'd like to say that and believe what I say.
I say it; I believe it -- but do I truly so?

Do I confuse my thinking? Fear may be proper;
a thrill-seeker may be all that anyone ever is;
we hide, rosey Moses in bully ruses, our truth,
but we like our scary movies and monster mashes
when we may squirm and squeal in hearts' desire.

Deny that you love me as I love you, or go away.
It's sad to see aged children playing, cynical,
jaded, pretending to be children they could be
could they but reverse digital approximations,
the lies that lie around, about analogic truth.

I'm cold and I'm hungry.  This is no riddle
with an amusing, entertaining, witty answer.
This is me, and I live everywhere, nowhere --
I hardly live at all, but I'm alive, so I say.

Feed me, shelter me, clothe me, love me --
teach me how not to fear deprivation or death
but, teach me, I pray you, by most holy example --
for then I shall no hunger, nor cold, not shame,
but find all things in the flames of our giving,
you to me, as I to you, a perfection of topology.

On the gravestone he could not afford to plant,
they did not write the epitaph he did not write,
but would have spoken had his skills been greater,
his life other than what it had always been,
a becoming of dust, a picture in sand, swept away
by any breeze blowing, any foot treading its path,
walking on its grave, walking it to early grave:

Deprived, but not depraved: I knew how I felt,
felt how I had never known quite enough,
felt how I had never felt too much,
nor had I ever become numb to fear.
Found I at last this unsought death, unknown,
unloved, left life and lost soul, bereaved.