"Steel"

-ONE-

It is looming in my mind.
Like overburden hangs above a mine shaft
This impending future poem.


I see dead trees with branches like talons
Dusty tombs gape open
Acting as portals to another place


Death and I smoke a pack of reds
Reading obituaries
Propped up in a corner bistro


Old men watching women saunter by
Remember sweet taste of youthful love
While drinking swill at $4.25 a cup


Observing young co-ed's trying so hard to be earnest
Listening to young poets
Spitting out meter and rhyme
As if some newly discovered energy source


What do they know of animals living in our chest, dying by degrees?
Taking myself to when we worshipped under a sky full of demons
Back before angels and saints ruled us

Sifting through a myriad of images
I keep hearing stories yet untold
I hold no animosity to black clad youth
Once I too…
Wore my revolution on my chest

But rarely does youth’s outrage
Survive middle age
Bank notes and mortgages

But today is their day
Rejoice in it
Stoke your fires
Build your bridges of well seasoned wood

In your coming years
Ponder your passion
Is it the kind which burns
Or does it warm

Will it carry you through an
Augustan night of the soul
Or leave you lamenting in
Job’s ashes


-TWO-


Remember my admonitions for
I am a Romantic
With a capital "R"
I have paid full measure to sup from
That particular bloody cup

Witnessing visions in a Moebius strip
Of causality
How many times
Do you think
People have
heard those poems

Of abuse
Might over right
Gender vs. Spirit
They never ever change
But the purity of love is eternal too...

Beat your chest
Like a smith works Iron
Between Carbon and Flux
Steel will form
Supple and Sharp


Let it fight your fights...

Open your veins holding
A bloody rose laced
With fire
In your
Palm

Then...
You can walk
Bramble paths bare-foot
Pushing open garden gates
Leading to your Golgotha

Sacrifice yourself to
Oneness with He who commands
Lightning bolts
Digs channels for torrents
Tips over water jars of heavens

Feeding a thirst of
Righteousness
Of beauty
Turning dry clods of earth into
Life giving soil

Do you rail and rage
Against unanswerable fate
Still...
Gnash your teeth
Flex your muscles before
Men of words
Who take but
Cannot lead

It is the hard path
Which burns bridges
Of well seasoned
Wood

-THREE-

Flow amongst your outrage
As a fish swimming
Make sailing boats from
Heron feathers

Let them sail to far off towered Illyria
Or to a destination with fate
But make them sail away
Carrying your poetic vision

Wave goodbye with
Iron Rod Angels and
Leather skinned Demons
At your elbows

Invite these imposters
To your board
Make a companion of both
Take fear and retribution
From your dinning table

Sit underneath an Oak of time
Contemplating your battles
Against injustice
Or life in a Bell Jar

May you find Grace
Hiding in sunbeams
Dusty corners and
Children's laughter

Hopefully at the end
In some potential future
You might be read by another
Learning how to
Make Steel

-FOUR-

If history teaches at all…
In a few years
Poets will still wear black clothes
But different faces will appear

One day like today
You might find yourself
In a bistro drinking coffee
Contemplating your mortality

By then…
I will have molded
My anger into a Terracotta skin
With my battle scars cast
Into my features

One of a multitude
Rank upon rank
Poetic warriors

Slowly being covered by
The Emperor of Time’s detritus

Cool and numbing
As Mother Earth’s
Womb revisited

My companions
And I
But await
Sleeping…


When our steel
Shall be needed again.

-Fin-

DS Baker