needed: brazen kings…

I set out to write a post about how much time we now spend looking at screens, and how little time we spend looking in mirrors. We know everyone else’s thoughts but I wonder if we know our own? Where is that sense of inner captaincy, that voice, as poet Nikki Giovanni wrote, that says ‘I am my own muse.’? I may still scratch such a post, but wouldn’t you know it a poem demanded to have its say. Now I believe its possible some may hear this poem as egocentric, but I would disagree. Brazen? Yes, but such is the winter’s need…  

The Israelite wail is still heard on our lips:
A king! Give us a king! Give us a king!
We desperately want to be like the others,
to have someone think for us and lead 
the charge. So for the umpteenth time God
bends to our will permitting tiny monarchs
to blind us for the summer with platforms
of pyrite, that is until the day the autumn
begins. Then regal leaves drop and scatter
as flesh are revealed for the fools they are.
The masses huddle back to the center and
cry once more for a savior. But why not be
brazen in that season? Besides, heroism is
not moving mountains so much as knowing
mountains. So skip the vigil, steal the altar 
wine, and make for the margins. Kneel and 
shoulder the winter’s need: You are your own king! 
 
 

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1 Comments

  1. Janet Lee on April 30, 2012 at 3:05 pm

    nice! please do return to that post about screens however! I need to read it!

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