To the Great Divine Part III

“In the shuffling madness
of the locomotive breath,
runs the all time loser
headlong to his death. 

Locomotive Breath, Jethro Tull

 The poor just keep getting poorer, 
 their pain permeates the air, and
 the black, mad blues are in shadows,
 for shadows are where the mad, sad man goes,
 in the sweltering heat or in the fallen snow.
 We’re juggling our realities, until 
 we are surprised by sudden death.
 The fallen are shot across the cold galaxy,
 where they see their panting breath.
Is this still Her Shekinah or 
 a quasar shining in outer space?
 Do we find facts to fit our facts,
  or live in a state of grace?
 Do we have Her blessing?
  Or we’re just dust to dust?
 Disenfranchised lives struggle
  to lift out of the swamp’s primordial slime,
  just to keep ahead of the false fact
that we believe we move through time.
 There is a silence after the sizzle of a snuffed out flame,
 when all the losers have lost their last and final game.
 The fool keeps on spending, until
 he loses all that was his to live,
 while the temples, they keep asking,
 for the poor to please kindly give.
 There’s a madness around every corner,
 trauma stricken people on striated streets,
 while the fake holy man takes advantage of 
 all those sinners he stops to greet.
 The dealers are always shadows within shadows,
 come to ease the worry and the grief, 
 by creating brief, new realities,
 to numb the nagging, constant pain.
 Hear the clacking of the rails 
 clattering through asteroid showers,
 with a chance of stardust turning into rain.
 To become, one, firing neuron in God’s celestial brain.
 Tired people, reaching out to the rolling cars,
 this cosmic train boards the hitching poor, 
 heading home amidst the distant stars
 where She shines like lightning
 behind every darkened door.
 The middle class are placing their bets
 on a better soon to be,
 while the poor never get out of debt
 that keeps them from being free.
 They’re all thumbing a ride 
 on the thundering train,
 even when all the forecasts say,
 It’s going to be a deluge of heavy rain.
 The politicians are prone to do nothing,
 with an ace up every sleeve.
 They can’t hear the steady, soft cry,
 people with a lost sense of identity,
 It’s time to round, them up,
 And hang ‘em all out to dry,
 a long clothes line of blue and 
 red striped ties.
 While the disadvantaged are drinking
 water filled with the poison, lead, 
 as they are praying
 for a loaf of yesterday’s day old bread.
 The losers all end up dealing in a hand of death,
 while the loco motive
 keeps running down it’s pulsar pounding tracks.
 There is a kind of holiness in the sidewalks cracks,
 as they are filled with Your water, flowing
 from Your buckets of our mothers.
 While the sewer people are praying for Her
 To bring home something fresh to eat, and
 to relief from the suffocating, stifling heat.
 A homeless holy man says he’s God.
 He gives out little cards that say, 
 ‘The Lord is in every chord.’
 There is nothing, but to believe in him, since
 he dwells in the darkest nights,
 his false shine is off an old flashlight
 that tends to lose power 
  while the homeless children play,
  a familiar string game,
 ‘Here is the church.  Here is the steeple…’
 The train click clacks rickety tracks
 as it scoops up all the ragged people.
 Lost souls are Her specialty.
 She brings them out of all the shadows,
 the lost, they are Her most hallowed,
 as the cosmic train keeps on rumbling.  
 It won’t slow down.
 No, it won’t slow down.