*****

Recorded Reading (3:35): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kkx29qs85kgvrupvkc8k3/The-Path-True-Poets-Walk.mp3?rlkey=7ncqpfvdanjullwiv000wz8zb&st=qpqby35v&dl=0

*****

The Path True Poets Walk

As you drive yourself to work
See me at the corner lurk
Dressed in such wise
You “realize”
Can only be prepared to shirk

That dim round of daily
Enforced grinding slavery
Rouses you at crack of dawn
To get your good defenses on
Cosmetically

In your heart there’s only room
Angry, bitterly assume
I take from you
What’s needed to
Make your life really bloom,

In cause of my own support,
And spend my days in carless sport
Such as you
Would waste them to
If you had none to whom you must report

Little do you speculate:
I work early, I work late
Accepting so much limitation
There can be no imitation,
Though gifted to your very soul, ingrate!

Harsh the path true poets walk
Dark the forces which them stalk
Constantly having to turn
To stalk those forces in return,
Where you perceive but only empty talk

If they were to take from thee
All kinds and forms of poetry
Shutting your mind’s highest door
Admission of ascension for
How infinitely poorer you would be!

How mis’rably you’d creep along
Without a single written song
Without, again, the slightest beacon
Of moral good no one will speak on
In case superiors might take them wrong

Do you arise at two AM
On your gentle Muse’s whim?
O think not that I suffer loss
Of a most demanding boss
Betimes unreasonably grim!

Does your employ demand of you
Maintain a well-disciplined view
Of every passing circumstance
Day nor night, never the chance
Relax your full vigilance to?

Or ~ here is one would make you sigh ~
Require you never tell a lie
No matter the incentive, or
Full precedent which came before ~
You think you can? Just try!

Must maintain an attitude
Never furnishes platitude
Be called unfeeling, cold and mean
And every epithet beteen —
Uncultured, self destructive, rude

And in each moment you must be
Of total authenticity
Serene, composed and wise
Whilst wading through the lies
Others unendingly think you don’t see

Denied the priv’ledge aught to sell ~
So much as any statement tell
For pers’nal benefit alone
So conscientious have you grown,
Consider first it everyone do well

Paying every price required
No matter hungry, cold or tired
Even as you desp’rate sob
Remembering to do your job
For which, before your birth, by heaven hired

No, it would not be near a lie,
Though derelict you think you spy,
Upon this day
Were one to say
You don’t work even half as hard as I

*****

This poet works for the good of her nation and society, seven days a week.

She’s in a pretty bad fix right now ~ due to the new crime of online targeting already homeless, now for the same reason the van she lives in has stopped running. Not a hope of fixing it without donations.

SHE WILL NOT SIGN AWAY HER CIVIL RIGHTS AND ABANDON HER POSSESSIONS TO ENTER IMPRISONMENT IN A “SHELTER.” SHE WILL NOT WAIT FOR IMPRISONMENT FOR AN UNPAYABLE FINE.

One ticket is death. Real.

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