Mad Poets Of Wisdom

Mad Poets Of Wisdom
© Surazeus
2024 05 17

We are all growing old in far-off lands, 
we hot-head rebels of important streets 
who journey urban waste lands of our nation 
in restless cars of existential dread, 
at last to shuffle shag carpets of wealth 
in waning days of our democracy. 

I wander forlorn in no songless groves 
of empty Parnassus or Helicon, 
and far from Mount Takoma I now dwell, 
still energized by visions of weird futures 
my Muse showed me in her haunted woods, 
heart aching to hike rugged hills again. 

Yet fierce ambition of my curious mind 
to sing epics with lyre of Mercury 
still fuels hot furnace of my hungry heart 
that first sparked me alive with lightning flash 
so, like nameless monster Frankenstein quickened, 
I wander waste land of the modern world. 

Buzzing with passion in dark basement room 
where I first learned to orate with guitar, 
I lounged with ghosts of mad poets of wisdom, 
Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, 
Ginsberg, Lowell, Schwartz, Eliot, and Rilke, 
Fellowship of the Raven-Feather Quill. 

Lost refugee from old New England towns, 
descended from Pilgrims and Puritans 
who traveled west in lonely wagon trains 
from Chesapeake Bay to the Salish Sea 
on the Oregon Trail to Wonderland, 
I chant spells on misty hillside in moonlight. 

Alone on shore of the Oregon coast, 
buffeted by relentless winds of change, 
I meet Anne Bradstreet, Mother of my Muse, 
who points my way back east on signless road 
so I wander singing tales thirty years 
till I settle in Appalachian hills. 

If I traveled back to my Motherland, 
England through Germany to Scythia, 
I know I would not find idyllic past 
glowing in memories my ancestors dreamed 
which program how my brain perceives this world, 
so I am content in my oakwood home. 

Our strong democracy will never vanish, 
though greedy tyrant, grasping at false crown 
that fettered head of the crucified king, 
attempts to idolize himself messiah, 
for Liberty holds high bright torch of justice 
and writes tales of freedom in Book of Truth.