Ars Poetica

Embrace the opaque phrases
That may spiral downward
To certain death, or take wing
In the famished hearts of the alienated,
Combing the earth for golden song.
A pulse beats in complex patterns,
Then covers blank pages with literary
Blight or illuminations sure to be ignored
In the babble of the Data Revolution,
A cavalcade of fragments studied, then
Forgotten as priorities alter, and form
New kingdoms of provisional verities.
Is it folly to strum the human chords
Of infinite desire, or a noble deed
To dig deeply into our pasts and hidden
Secrets?
Petition no outside force
Of horrific agenda, and merely gauge
The percussion from within a storm
Of rising ires, infernos that eventually
Ebb as dawn connects with a precise
Right hook to a mind that felt it needed
No rest from the daily chaos of cross-
Purposes. Declaim, educate, but do not
Propagandize to the weary bodies,
Who've heard a thousand promises,
And lost a million dreams down the chute
Of possibility, crumpling into a ball of dejection
Beside a river of ostensible serenity in bars
Of failing livers, and musical tastes that
Conflict with the glossy bubblegum of
Stale provocations.
May it suffice
That one feels as a billion others might
In their exotic hamlets and curious lexicons,
Battling local dragons to a standstill before
The walls cave in, and reduce a humble edifice
To ashes in the mania of conflict? Will the lyrical
Ballad save us from our worst shades, and cause
A soul to transcend its limits within the stanzas
Of unabashed joys, Elysian counties that may
Prove fatal to the wandering disposition
Of psychic ailments and visions that may prove
Tyrannical once history documents
The rebel's smoldering thesis?

Hagan Pedersen