The overtones were under blown,
And so no one got to the point.
Speak up she said, before you're dead,
There's so many to disappoint.

I furled my brow,a bit angry now,
This crowd has an evil intent.
They want games and names and eternal flames,
And I was about to repent.

Look I've cried and tried and tried to cry,
To entertain all of my life,
I write, I talk and sometimes I gawk,
But recently my time has been rife.

With ups and downs and clowns that frown,
Things just aren't the same anymore,
We've had tears and fears and Trumpian jeers,
How soon can we show him the door.

I asked if crying would help?

She said no.

I suggested lying perhaps?

She said no.

Then dying it is and I opened the window.

So, what are you waiting for, she asked.

500 years ago,
On a shoreline in northern Peru
More than 140 children,
Were ritually sacrificed,
Their chests sliced open,
From the sternum,
And their hearts ripped out,
Literally, all in one day.

In America over 5000 catholic priests
Have been reliably identified,
As child rapists,
And that's just since 1950.
And only in one country.

Over 300,000 child soldiers exist today.
The worst of the worst,
Had to ****** their parents,
On the day of their abduction.
Think about cutting open your father's throat,
And watching him bleed at your feet.
Over 30% of child soldiers are girls.

This poem won't trend,
Almost no one will care,
And I am certainly no saviour.

But somehow, someday, somewhere,
The essence of us must change.
Only art can save us.
I know that now.

The mist appeared,
Seconds after the sun finally came unglued
From its passionate kiss  
Of the brush and edge of a prairie horizon.
Its last bit of linger,
Promised a rainbow.

Dawn needs a witness,
A town crier,
Someone to shout outloud,
That no one is forgotten,
To assure all who early rise,
Hope is earned and alive.

Hope lives, hope endures, hope loves to surprise.

On a night when nothing better
was likely to happen, a beat throbbed
out just the right line, and a bounce woke
up in the toe of a boot, and everything
in the night sky was sparkling light,
which is how I found myself one time
at the local VFW where they played
the same tattered tunes over and over
until the need to dance drained out
of a lonely sad woman there like suds
from a dripping beer tap, and so
she steered me out onto the back deck
where a hard-boiled moon dangled
from the power lines looking something
like hope warmed over; we untangled
ourselves when the sun finally shined.

I don't care.
I've given up.
**** it, I'll be runnerup.

The lies, the truth,
Which is worse,
Be clear almighty universe.

I'm better than you,
It says so, boo,
On the bottom of my shoe.

There is no out,
Best plop right down.
Lived my life as an angry clown.

What you think its real?
Maybe it is or maybe we forgot,
How to untie all the nots.

Yeah, I'm done,
Lived life so recklessly,
So fecklessly in constant perplexity.

No more thought or tears,
I've had my fill,
Time an enemy I could not ****.

I'm just a citizen with no names to mention
no one is to blame for the hate and the tension
measuring success by how the other falls
he's got the world by the *****

snowflakes, cupcakes, makes me cold and hungry
no one is to blame for the lust of the money
success is measured by your picture on the walls
he's got the world by the *****

I can't see  the forest
For the beaches
Or the sand for the mountains or the valley for the meadow
Or the particulars for
The details.

But, once in a while,
On a fair day
I can smell the breeze
Off the beach
Through the meadow
Flow over the valley
To the forest at the edge

Of the mountains shadow.
Under the fairest blue
straining
To gorge my senses
With
that scented view.