A CROWD HAS BEGUN TO GROW

He has taken off his sandals.
His feet seem new as he moves about.
The sandals have been on for far too long.
Walking in them seems pointless.

Within one hundred yards a crowd has begun to grow
from the moans of protest because something lives there.
Something breathes the jarring dust of solitude
and cries out without a throat, tongue lashed to pretense
with all the trappings of hostilities’ offspring.

O! He wishes to see the sun!
Alone, unshackled, while wearing his own sandals,
his own clothes, his own wish, his own sky!

How long now has it been?
Years… years alone. Loneliness is just a word,
like worship or friendship or death.
This man has a crowd of words, a horde of thoughts
that are his, yet heavy with chains like some rabid beast.
His voice now an echo unto himself. Unto himself.

He has concluded his begging for freedom and is now
ready to move along. He had things he wanted to give away.
He had things he wanted to relinquish like rolling thunder.
But they did not care to hear his storm.
They said he would not enter the world
until he swallowed more fouled water,
sunk into misery with the others,
he could taste them in the water,
see their amused and pale faces.

Outside of his agony a crowd has begun to grow
From the cries of dissent because something grows there.
Something grows with each day, each squeeze of the chains.
Something wordless and ugly breeds with the pain and terror,
has begun to grapple with creation.

Plans now swagger across his floor like a five-star general
on the battlefield of his god-fouled glory.
His fresh ideas barbed by his suffering,
lashed of his torture, his emptying eyes,
agony-worn limbs and stolen days,

brethren calling to him with grave retribution,
where his own spirit scans the stone horizon
with a victim’s lens, an innocent man’s visionary
of truth and justice
brought forth for oily hunger, terrified toadies
with their own profit to inhabit.

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman