"Bluff Road"

　

Along Bluff Road
I see shadows walking

In ambulatory silence
Each seeking solace in

Darker stretches of lost passion

Party shops with fishing lures
Of drugs and alcohol

Hold those shadows close
To their breast
Like a suckling mother her child

Third shift specters
Walk through industrial
Parks of effort and paid wages

Only to find repose upon
Rainbow jeweled parking lots

Smoking menthol cigarettes
Drinking cheap malt liquor

With cunning of Tonk
Guile of ivory bones

Pissing on cinder block walls

Each with a pocket full of
ATM receipts
Not dreams
Lotto tickets
Not hope

Would Dubois or Carver have
Understood this despair

Would they have known these false faces
Could their anger still hold firm
As bulwarks of hope

Television has robbed
Left nothing feeding nothing

Telling shadows flickering
In blue light caves
Your are the ghost not I

Slavery is dead
But those willing to
Have placed their neck
Back into the yoke

Here in the New South

Churches
Youth groups
Fight those chains of birth
Shackles of economics
But slide backwards

What does heaven’s reward hold
When your dead from the neck up
While profits from crack
Lay at your feet

Intangible grace is often less
Compared to shiny sedans
With tuck tires

Thousand dollar rims
Jacked six feet in the air
New rednecks of America

The shadows watch
Smoking and drinking

Stylized street predators
Minds calculating like an Abacus

Solving Geometry equations of angles

The Devil sends his message
Devotees summoned shuffle in
Full light of day

To his house...

Blake’s Paradise Lost Party Shop

While the east bank
Of the Congaree River
Has woods deep

With sounds of
Shadows Haunting

-Fin-

DS Baker