Requiem for the Masses

Admiring from a distance
achievements of the great and good
unending daily service
of steady dull
obligatory labour

Unaware of the rising stench
of rotting corpses
waiting for burial or cremation
creatures born of ignorance
prejudice and bigotry
and violence
injustice against women
pornography
murder and rape

What's wrong with me ?

How can I be so callous
indifferent to their suffering and pain ?

By turns my heart is filled with poison
one kind after another

Jealousy and envy

Hatred and distaste

Who would be my teacher ?
Who would be their friend ?

Who will press tender lips
onto the furrowed brow
of the dying and the maimed
and turn their head
to hear at last
the dying words
of starving children ?

What can they say ?

How can you justify
the ways of God to man ?

We want to be free
to do what we want to do

Restore your forgiveness
and mercy unto me

We want to be free
to cry out fire
in a crowded theatre

What do you want ?
What do you want from me ?

Surely freedom
is doing what you have to do
without a heavy heart

You will be judged
and weighed in the balance

Save their souls

Free them forever
from this tyranny

I am beginning to forget their faces

To the dreamers
self deceivers

Be careful what you dream
Sometimes your dreams come true

You've made your bed
so lie in it

There's nothing else to do

Put out the light
Curl up tight

Put all your cares behind you
No one's gonna ask you now
How can you sleep at night ?

When reason sleeps
monsters keep
an evil eye on dreamers
to catch their dreams
and make their meaning
clear to non believers

To the poets and believers

They say
Nothing's new under the sun

We say prayers over the dead

Every sentence in my head
someone else has said

There's nothing you can say
that can't be said in prose

Nothing that you say
can't be better said
in prose

Anything
a poem or a lyric or a verse can say
can always be rewritten
and said much better
in plain English

Better in the sense
of being clearer
in its meaning
and intent

But also we know
that something's lost
in the translation

Only when words have rhyme and rhythm
can they be mnemonic
wonderful evocative bewitching

Confusing or concise
carry a tune
and make a
thought or feeling
easy to remember

When we are never seen again

When we have gone away

Will we be loved ?
Will we be missed ?

Will you perhaps remember us
for what we did ?

But forget the reason why ?

Then let a poet speak
and let him sing

Let him have the final say

The last words of the eternal optimist
Remember them

This isn't how I die

Don't let your dreams belong to anyone
Don't let your dreams come true

Keep believing in the possibility
of things yet to come

You can't change the world
but the world is ever changing

Don't ask science
to explain the meaning
of everything to you

If it does
you know it lies
and lies are better than the truth

And that's a lie

The truth is very simple

I know I am alive
and life must go on

I know they are dead but I'm alive
and life must go on

Appearance is deceptive
and beauty is a lie

The truth is an ugly truth
you don't need to know

That is all you need to know

All you need to know

That's all you know
and all you need to know

That is all you need to know

O coiner of phrases
Will you ever be forgiven ?

Can you speak truth to power
and justify the ways of God to man ?