LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

What motion can be generated out of all the corruption? The poet revives in himself an instinct for healthy political order. Something intuitive in him makes him realize that the nightmare of political acts is rewarded with excellent poetry. The maker- feeling around him the dense and putrid air of corruption- must push against the tearing claws of the beast.

The center has collapsed from the weight of its accumulated evil and, set loose, his nature provokes the ghosts in things to haunt the innocent. Laws can not measure the destruction to the soul that occurs when it knows it is captured in a present time and, then, ventures outward to meet the time on its own terms.

The politician, accepting a variety of bribes, is implicating the efforts of the poet. The force of transmission is determined by the sanity of the institutions.

What puerile questions can the poet ask his fellow citizens to alert them to the grave danger? They piss in the adjoining trees and move on. The dislocation will not harm them but they will suffer and choke in their dreams and their children will set fire to the density of and dance around the flames.

Throw it all over, he says to himself. The poet assumes that the worst has has occurred and begins to plant the first subtle seeds of the future. fossils litter the city avenues as he dreams of future citizens and how they will move through the pure community of the mind, inspiring many to leave their home and forage for aspects of itself it still recognizes.