The last order given
Followed, unflinching.
Though cannons fired
Though bullets bit
Though man after man
Was lost to the rain:
The 93rd stood
Til the next order came.
Monthly Archives: July 2018
The 93rd
Easing a Road
Easing a road
By shielding a spark
For self, others, all
Closing a door to another,
Cruelly, coldly, and callously,
To open a door for yourself or simply
To amuse
Building a platform –
Making a mask –
By buffing rough edges smooth,
By raising high the low,
For fear. Perhaps,
For pride alone.
Shaping a shield
By redirecting the aim
To hide a sin – forever of long enough
To get away.
Protection or advantage
Entertainment or life,
For others. For self.
For wrong. For right.
A gradual gradient
Or black and white?
Selected by Fit
Tinder, tender,
Orders, odors,
Officials, offense,
Lies, limits, lips:
Selected by fit.
Willingly Await
Across the country they hide away
In huge ice boxes of drywall and paint:
A horde of leftovers that willingly await
A world of wandering giants.
Wonder.
What steals it away?
Our curiosity and awe –
Nature or nurture? What
Displaces our joy of discovery with
Endless ennui for such
Ridiculously wonderful things?
Making a Nation
Founding Fathers
Merchants and farmers
Prisoners and protestants
Boatman and trailblazers
Fortune hunters and families
Plantations and slaves
Abolitionists and soldiers
Statesmen and sherriffs
Miners and railroadmen
Industrialists and unions
Newsmen and orphans
Suffragists and freed slaves
Scientists and snake oil salesmen
Socialists and socialites
Hollywood and haulers
Songwriters and slumlords
Innovators and excavators
Teachers and tax evaders
Engineers and Evangelicals
Policemen and prostitutes
Programmers and painters
Doctors and dancers
Criminals and creditors
Bankers and buskers
We build it together
Advance or retreat
Completely our nation
Yet never complete
The Hooks
A single hook pulls but one way
To a single doom by a single wound
Or it tears away, a permanent pain
Exchanged for a freedom that’s new.
But multiple hooks (two, three, or more)
Pull together the force of a terrible choice:
Acceptance of them or a gaping hole
That can close but never return the loss.
Or those same hooks can pull apart:
Tearing or tugging however they choose,
A storm of forces that fight and shred
Follow one, fight another, again, again, and again,
Until one or the other, flesh or forces, lies dead.
twytte 