SLOUCHING HEROS

you can spend a life shabbily bulding
a tower of mock ivory
let the most important issues of your time
become too cliched
for the literati crowd in your mind

the fuzz in my navel
needs no more new names
youngsters have too many
co-dependent porno shots
getting muddled in their minds with
for real for real girlies
the video games say more about violence
than a few words ever will

maybe I want to pretend
the bigger issues
within my words
make the words
themselves
somehow bigger
like a goddamned rock star
periennally proving all the puff and bluster
in the world
can't produce a hit song


do I take a cause
to show my moral side
keep the focus away
from my hunchback
on my truths
rather than my lies


words words words
flying crazy through the winds of context
controlled by the comings and goings
of the emotional storms


and what matter the gun that starts the race?

maybe some saints get there
making up for sins
go from gangsters
to quiet men in the prison library
talking about how crazy far down
those kid hormones
can take ya







copywrite 2006 john scott ridgway