Where the Sidewalk Ends

We have become a nation of Tennessee fainting goats,
muscles freezing in the panic of social discord,
poised on the cusp of dread, eyeing a mass grave.

In the end no one really dies, the only dilemma being unpardonable
poverty, needless hunger and children born with drug addiction,
pawns in a chess game of life lacking raison d'etre.

And shall I live my span, leaving no mark upon history?
What occlusion obstructs human decency in this land of riches,
barricades the impassable gulf, as if echoing a distant waterfall?

I have walked this sidewalk to where it ends and seen the destitute.
How the poet in me shudders and like the fainting goat,
collapses in the sadness of our mutual story, our personal holocaust!



Poetry by Brian Oarr
Read 1039 times
Written on 2013-12-08 at 15:02

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Seeing the destitute makes the poet in you shudder? Your "mutual story?" "Our personal Holocaust!"? Isn't that painting it a bit thick? Unless you've been there, and maybe you have, I haven't, I wouldn't compare myself that way. It's unseemly.

If you have been destitute, and have lain where the sidewalk ends (which is the title of a Shel Silverstein book, by the way), I apologize for this comment.
2013-12-09



Why stay on the sidewalk? When it ends there's still a path.
2013-12-08