©1978  M. Bennett Hooper

How is it we can deal with dying
But not with pain.
Who is to say that death is an absolute even for
Non-believers.

Just as I want to know the good I must also be aware of evil.
My bowels have delivered too many martyrs.
Pain is an ongoing experience a part of my being.
A numbness arrived at through searching for my own realities
It is not a way of life but I cannot live without it.

My quest is incurable but I know great joys even in pain.
I know the joy of love, and trust and friendship.
I know the joy of truth, and realize that caged birds song
Is his condition from another time when he was free
And I know this memory dies hard.

Have we not sung for centuries in this land
And continue to sing until the tyrants among us die.
For once again we shall soar like the great birds
We always were.

Why is Liberty a white whore that steals my men.
Why is justice for me and mine blind.
Can she not stand the radiance which is truth.
Dear trusting souls she was never blind only partial.

Strange that the powerful and mighty never call her name
When they are in their hour.
But the poor and hungry continue to cry to a Bitch Goddess.

Strange that her lover freedom is unknown
In the citadels of the mighty.
What need have they of him when the wretched of the earth Emulate, follow, and die for want of his presence.

Stranger still that here in the darkness of my own condition
I should pay heed to a caged birds song and still remain Curious about the chosen heathen among us.
But there is much to learn from the decline of the mighty.
Humanity's empires are doomed to fall.