TREE?
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Hey, nonny, nonny. Hey NONNY, NONNY, NOW
I'm calling to YOU, from the STREET -
Hauling MY load, hauling YOUR LOAD,
Hauling THAT load, on that ROAD
That
PAVE - MENT!
From your cradle SHADE to your GRAVE tent,
From Rosy Morn to Purpled EVE
On that macadam, that conCRETE -
That way from houses, hospitals, and factories
To offices, stores, chapels, and morgues
Halls of ConGRESS and jails
Palaces, cemeteries, and fields of
Wind Waving
WHEAT!
That path to get the things,
WE, no longer being hunter-gatherers,
EAT!
That celebrated-in-song:
"That State ______, that great ______"
That "North to Alaska",
"Flying down to Rio",
"L.A., N.Y.(C), and it's all the same ______."
Littered by many, kept tidy by some,
Who like everything ribbon-wrapped, and
NEAT!
That no-place-to-be-in-the-sweltering-
HEAT!
That slippery, sliding, slick in the
SLEET!
That party where we'd all like to
MEET!
In a big, boogie-woogie band
With a bowlegging, back-
BEAT!
That long and winding way,
The END of which waits for us all to
GREET!
THAT time is here
For us not to be dis-
CRETE!
Listen, now.
Can't you here the soft-shoe
Step of THOSE tender
FEET,
In the EVER-livingTREE
Tops along each and every FLEET
STREET?
Yet,
Meanwhile,
Back in the city
Nothing
is quite so pretty.
In fact, it's downright gritty!
With the shuddering thud of those infernal jack-hammers,
With cries of innocent blood forgotten in dark "slammers",
With kids rapping like a stud, totin' their "boom-box-jammers",
Clanging like jay-birds in the trees,
Banging the beat of their dis-ease,
Hanging out on summer stoops,
Wondering why so many who look so caged,
So completely-unnaturally-aged
In their sky-Scr-ra-ping stacks of coops,
Move along sidewalks with automatic airs,
To limos, buses, cars, taxis, and subway/elevated stairs,
Like they're hopping through HOOPS
"...of real fire!"
(as opposed to the metaphorical variety
to which bards and troubadors aspire...)
STREETS!!!
Definitely not houses. Hardly spaces
To welcome strange, peculiar faces.
That disappearance of farmer's stalls
(What, with the coming of the malls...)
Where one could have even live pullets
THAT SUDDEN THOUGHT
OF SNIPER'S BULLETS!!!
Although the thought disturbs,
When you live between the gutters and the curbs
Of the cities, instead of out in the sub-urbs,
Where the HORSE has gotten STUCK
Behind the CART of epiphany -
That flash without warning of any kind,
That notion in the collective mind,
That HOME is where you find
your HEART...
So, why is anyone
"HOMELESS"?
Written 1989, this version
Copyright 2000 Jesse Slokum
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