Perchance

Valleys of the mind go to waste

In the tresses

foul and stench, like the rotting flesh

of policy, political mind.

Do you only find the salvation

of the sniveling kind, 

Beneath the barrel, rum, whiskey, chowder,

of your bowed flower-power

with wills that bend in the breeze

as you hang onto the slightest chance, 

That the sullen dreams perchance

can be fulfilled by the devil; 

And it is censorship that bounds us, 

Ties us to the fire stakes, coal road; 

but the hand that you eat from 

is what feasts on your soul

wilted weak in the river streams of tyranny schemes, 

and I ask:

why side with the oppressor

and carry the platter to serve them on,

to enjoy the prestige that glows from signs, 

And signs, and desk plaques, and desk furnaces, 

and death sentences, and coats over the cubicle

and soured sticky notes with nothing important 

and time with only the mind, half-hardened, half-forgotten

and small blue skies painted like the display at an asylum, 

and Tupperware red and stacked by the microwave stains

Marking the days, months, years, decades 

that you forget what it’s like to be around anyone

That isn’t you.