Wandering through Westminster Abbey,
this long-bearded fellow leaning
against a gravestone, arms folded,
looks at me like we’d been talking for hours.
I.
My son’s feet are wider than mine
and mine wider than my father’s.
He needs the girth to control
the accelerators and brakes,
he’s not mobile without them.
We all duck under colonial doors and mourn
over graves wider than our grandfather’s.
You know, organisms will increase
faster than the food supply,
but many young then die to control
the population.
I’m reminded of all the Food Fairs
and Acmes at home and wonder
if they build them to keep up
or we procreate to make sure
they have customers.
I think about the gangs and drive-bys
and governments and presidents
treating children like cattle.
II.
Those that possess the characteristics
most useful in their environment
produce more offspring.
They pass on those attributes
to the next generation,
ultimately creating new forms
so different in structure and behavior
that they can’t breed or communicate
with the originals.
At home we preach racism and hate
and are lied to by leaders sent by God.
We have progressed to total apathy
to the subversion of truth.
We no longer need the Bill of Rights,
that was for the short guys,
we need a Patriot’s Act and the fear
of terrorists who hate us for
our superior characteristics.
III.
He says to call him Charles
and he is much more animated now.
He strokes his beard and seems to wonder
whether I understand.
You are like giant tortoises driving cars
that widen your feet and ass.
You have evolved over two hundred years
not as specie but as bloated Americans,
hated for your size and strength
and for the deaths of unknown
sons and daughters.
You are willing to give your own
for oil and revenge so as not to lose face
or mobility in the driveway.
Do you think your new-selves could discuss
the needed cultural abilities of today
with the founding fathers of 200 years ago?
What language would you use?
Do you think they would feel
dwarfed at the meeting?
Do you think they would even come?
Worrisome thoughts, but overall I think people of today may be typecast by their loudest and most disturbing elements. The majority of people I meet are nothing like the obnoxious idiots parading across my TV screen and pontificating on the Internet.
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“Wandering through Westminster Abbey,
this long-bearded fellow leaning
against a gravestone, arms folded,
looks at me like we’d been talking for hours.”
Craig,
I was immediately hooked!
“You know, organisms will increase
faster than the food supply,
but many young then die to control
the population.”
A sobering fact…but on considering it, not only is it true, it makes sense.
I want it not to be true, but something says to me, “It will always be so”
The second stanza of part two chills me to the bone.
and then the awful truth of :
“You are willing to give your own
for oil and revenge so as not to lose face
or mobility in the driveway.”
America is guilty as charged…(it kind of puts the fireworks of July 4th in a different perspective)
…and yet I want the truth to be that this country was not founded on propaganda,
and that somewhere beyond the terrorists and the crooked politicians, and the greed
and the bias, there is still heart and will to do better. I have always believed that poets
will lead the world to peace, and that philosopher poets will forge the way.
Reading this poem is like looking into a mirror that refuses to say we are the fairest in the land…
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