You will learn all about yourself when your

freedom is severed, or better, surrendered

in protest of perceived, unholy folly;

putting your fate in the hands of The Man.

“Hell no!  We won’t go!  Hell no!  We won’t go!

No more war!  No more war!…” ad infinitum;

chants do return “trippingly on the tongue.”

•

A solitary mind in confinement

inexhaustibly plays its solemn loop

of the good intent and martyr’s response.

Does pride in action belittle the cause?

Not permitted to lie down till lights out,

your throne is a straight-back chair;

you step off the hours in mock pilgrimage or

gawk through grasped bars at the unknown;

resolve is alternately lost…..regained,

lost and regained, lost and regained and

your unknown fate paralyzes you in time,

but the hardest part, the choice, is passed.

•

Greed and war still rule The Man’s agenda;

passions and kindred anger still flare,

but now too easily are cooled by time’s

new and loathed, hobbling pal, passivity.

Regretting little in my past, it’s the

new cynicism that makes me shameful.

Does idealism always wither but

linger in the shadows to taunt and chide?