LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

The poet's prose is that of an angry citizen who senses collapse at any moment.

"Great wars have been waged for this?" he thinks to himself.

"The complex thought of the philosophers has been build for this?"

Not wanting to acknowledge the fact that the air is deflated in the political realm something instinctive takes over.

The poet, distant relative of the founders of the culture, commiserates with them in his secret lair. Thoughts are transmitted in the exotic means he has set up to communicate with the past.

A massive scramble for power precedes the poets desire to disentangle himself from the structure of things. It grows thick and smelly arms that sweep him into the universe he is trying to escape.

One small circle of friends attacks the political center to protect themselves from the knowledge they will never enter the center. Distressed, like the poet, by where they are they agree to help each other manuever through a continually shrinking universe looking for a few words and acts that will free them.

The poet feels that they are pausing before they go into some business opportunity and the life of money-making. Friends attempt to fix themselves on the stairway to power but they are neither articulate or sincere.

"Do not fill me, abstractions that flow from the memory of the city," the poet chants. He laughs. A wildness has overtaken him before he writes. He wants to hide from the pulverizing abstractions; the women will not allow him to. Very well, he will stand and face the atrocity before he is laid low.

It is pernicious and descends to threaten the life of the city. It is like a thick black river sweeping the windows from the high buildings. Birds are mesmerized by souls that stick out from the mixture, wiggling to free themselves.

And yet, the poet thinks, why is there joy? There is life circulating outside the walls of this ancient town, in the desert, that was abandoned to everything but the anchorite.

Useless ornaments of the daily world are swept swiftly to the oceans edge.

The unchallenged are resting on the ledge of a sheltered building watching the flow of things.