My sincere apologies for using Maya Angelou’s brilliant, but savage, The Rock Cries Out To Us Today, for form and guidance when I wrote this poem. This is dedicated to all the leaders and followers of the al Qaeda movement. The only way to stop the madness is for the leaders of those Middle Eastern countries to rise up, denounce and actively fight for the destruction of this group of murderers.
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A Pebble, A Brook, A Sapling
Possessor of life recently born,
Distinguished from the cockroach.
The insect, who tried patience
And was even food
To the inhabits of the planet,
Only to unnerve those who would investigate their fatality
Instead, revel in the survival of the centuries.
Yes, the Pebble bellows, insanely, unaffectedly,
Leave, you filthy beasts, begone from me
Where you defecate upon my passive form,
It’s your fate to be immortal.
Loathsome one, fashioned only slightly higher than
The droppings you leave have outlasted the world
In your busy pursuit,
Lingering beyond your accepted time
Head reared in knowledge.
Treacherous tentacles feeling your way
Avoiding assassination.
The Pebble screams begone and
Veil your grossness.
From the other side,
The Brook languishes in its stupor,
Impatient at your reluctance to join its rippling waters.
Your clannish brood baked by the sun,
Invincible and uniformness, scurrying erratically,
Hiding from your oncoming doom.
Your secretive hideaways for dominion of the world
Forfeit rings of vacuous scum around you,
And beleaguered trepidation within my heart.
Still, you are constantly summoned to drink from my stream,
My marrow. But you are too busy with world mastery to hear.
You, with your newly found anthem of destruction sing
Of disharmony and anarchy of your rediscovered hero’s,
Your hate-filled Saints call you forth for confrontation
Of recent imagined and long ago slights.
I beseech you; remember the sins of yesterday, yes,
But recognize the new day as it is.
A glorious time.
For all.
The Comatose Brook and the Bellowing Pebble
Join together in unanimous loathing for you.
And all the others, the Oxen, the Sheltering Sky, the Lowly Ant
The Crow, the Subordinate Sheep, the Soaring Hawk
The Tumultuous Thunderbolt, the Bucking Pintos, the Kitten,
The Red Clay, the Gentle Lamas, the Cowardly Ostrich,
The Bastard Son, the Wife of Lot, the Honest Woman.
The Wandering Oracle, the Lost Generation,
The Suburban Home, the Philosopher.
They all align themselves
To participate in your destruction.
The Burning Bush ignore your wretched wailing, and
Renounces your evil intentions, and sears you
With Brimstone, destroying your kind before
You can leap into the waters of the Brook.
Yo, progeny! legislated children
of an ignorant mind.
you are suspects
meddlesome clones of
strangulated mediocrity
in your one size fits all zealot shoes
and body armor
Your individuality has become suspect, as
You strangle in meddlesome mediocrity, even as you,
With your many feet, trample down the good earth
With never a backward glance at the rubble you leave
In your religious zeal to overcome your destiny.
You, nightmares of darkness,
You, with tentacles quivering, searching history to dismantle
As a highwayman would burn the coach to eradicate
The physical confirmation. You dream that you will
Burrow down. Tearing at the bedrock of
The Sapling growing beside the Brook. But the
Pebble and the Brook, and the Sapling are resilient
And your Antics are noted, as surely as your
Challenge is just now beginning to be understood
For what it is. A dark day awaits you as you endeavor to
Rewrite, in murky blood, the past.
If you cannot live without shame, neither
Shall you live to transmit dishonor on the
Ones who walk among you.
Cast down your convulsing tentacles
Knowing the evening shade is upon you.
Dismantle your detestable ideas
And crawl away and perish.
You males, you Females, you Adolescents,
Turn into yourself
Know what you have become
Publicly. Scour your conscience
And gaze into the Brook to see what you have become.
Cast down your anarchy
The day’s absolute devastation
For your newer order.
Divorce yourself from traitorous ideals
Of revolt and unrest
And bloodletting.
The heavens no longer bend toward you,
Guaranteeing you continued encouragement.
Now, here and forever
Reclaim control of your leaders
And observe the order of things
As do the Pebble, the Brook, the Sapling.
We are not benevolent Kings to your idlers.
Never. We remain rock steady in reason.
As you near the end of your worthless agendas
Look back to reality of history and into the eyes
Of honesty and righteousness
And understanding the uncompromising position your
Leaders have led you to, then
Forcefully, vigorously,
In insightful judgment
Come back to sanity.
©New Orleans, 1993 / Jerry Pat Bolton
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