from time to time i’ve noted that the brown bag prophet indulges himself by reading incongruous research on an array of topics this week he was readings a hans selye monograph about living with stress without distress when i inquired as to why the prophet said i’ve been trying to figure out why people like the president who’ve committed obvious moral and social crimes don’t respond to society stress when caught in their own rat traps selye’s research on rats notes it’s very difficult to stress rats
i am a back street poet
pied piper of little harlem
using my pen for a wood flute
calling out society’s rats
hoping to write their epitaph
smell the burning rags
endless odors of death
people blow their minds
over things they can’t define
so they light a fire or two
in hopes they might forget
endless odors of the dead
which creep into their souls
so they drink and waste all
relief line soldiers is their trade
passing my door – off to the camp
the camp of the great white father
who gives them no hope
to forget the damn smell
some fools say move away from here
but how
who’ll lend you the money
ain’t no one i know got one cent
so that ends that in a hurry
but the smell, the damn smell
it remains in the air
children playing barefoot in the streets
among the maze of broken bottles
laugh and cry and don’t know why
their lives seem different than yours
but the smell, the damn smell
lets them know all too soon
come walk with me to the grave
in which they’ve lain your city’s child
whose unmarked and small grave
is covered in weeds
but there in peace is rest
away from the smell
the damn smell
Read Between the Minds 