some doleful sounds

for Steven Paddock.

I went to bed last night with the news of Tom Petty's passing

so whatever shall serve you sirs, truly,

well I think I better not. Someone said he still

clings to life, a machine like a giant husband

hoovers over him, willing him to breath. Yet,what business

is it of mine to mourn the dead as if

I knew someone on a hill? Kent State. Caisson. Montgomery.

What reason

is my outcry adverse/doleful? Small, quivering, middle aged man

pre-diabetic, balding. Fluctuating between Tasters Choice

and the desolate wilderness Detroit? Hollowed out

like the gourds of truth the ancestors sift their moaning thru. In 68

we thought that the hooch was where the evil one hid his hobbies,

his GI heads on sticks, his prehensile tail

counting his loves, his deaths on the cat string abacus. Fled there,

his god, his children, but for what else could

the evil shaft revolve? Then it was the Blacks with their

raised fists and their leather-vest-afro's clinging to whatever symbol

(cymbal) hulft covering larvae could sing along while

tossing projectiles in the highest trajectories towards "the man". How

does it happen that way? At what precise moment does my memory

shift from me to they?

Send no money now LGBT. We will send you a bill later for your unrestrained outcry.

Until the gentlest among us gets a gun. In fact 40 guns and hides them under his shirt.

Like the parable of Jesus who met the man with the lunatic son, and i'm

paraphrasing, but he said to him, bring before me your crazy a*s kid,

whatever degree or extent you come for me, like this again,

broken and in-lifted, for I have done this for a thousand years,

we but boundless in his voice, and the demon shall be forced out. Like building

your wooden house in a city full of arsonist, pain and grief I can swallow too,

like amusement and blunder honey. So bring it. In fact shoot! Shoot all of us

if that's what madness takes, "at what price how a score of ewes now" (Shak). How

in the hell with the world watching

and country music blaring in the background, could you? with money and two fine homes?

With gambling, w****s and freedom? Perfection.

What archaic maneuvering thru the maze of secrecy will remain suspended over objects,

flaming barrows, so hot you had to change guns while killing innocence. What apparatus enabling

them to make loud howling noises in the night like wounded beasts;

or toeless Yetty's resting on a fallen tree. Like the wild and wounded,

it still seems possible, this morning to love one another. For it drives us

crazy to think that 59 dead was enough to get thru

this life saying, under our breath of course,

that you did nothing sir, but hurt

out loud.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

yes, "nothing but hurt outloud"

transient hearts find stopping places to lash out...
you ask in the poem what gives you the right to mourn....poets do mourn...poets feel even that which is not intimate to them...we understand the hurts as much as anyone can..and we empathize as well as can be.
there seems no reason for what happened in Las Vegas...maybe it is just someone trying to outdo the previous...
very well done here---
j.

[h d e rushin]

thank you dearest brother for those words of inspiration....dana