The House on the Blue Hill

Thoughts tinged blue with extinction’s mould
Repeated echoes of historic refrain
Bitter meals from bars of plundered gold
Unbidden you ride disenchantment again
Here thoughts like empty glasses yawn
To be filled with sentences of logic shawn
Words euphemistic from aphorism spawn
Empty your head they’ll do it just the same
Left like sugar to melt in caffeine rain
Divided by mind and manner born
To hang by fingertips in chambers of pain
Never to see the enlightened dawn
And from your window in a house already sold
By the masters of all to mean caretakers lame
You spy the one whose stories are told
Of the end of time and of thoughts insane
And were it not for those grains of hope
That fly on the wind of tomorrow’s light
You would roll your blanket tight with rope
Woven course and strong with clear hindsight
And head out here where the pavement ends
To join the others whose equilibrium depends
Not on wisdom handed down like cigarette ends
But by the light whose flame licking tends
To blacken the litter strewn from cathode screens
and putrid waste from ancient schemes
The light that declares in moments bare
I am afraid…
… is this what freedom means?

April 2006