No Sense in Trying to Understand…

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child’s balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door

You follow, find yourself at war

Watch waterfalls of pity roar

You feel to moan but unlike before

You discover that you’d just be one more

Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear

A foreign sound to your ear

It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall

Private reasons great or small

Can be seen in the eyes of those that call

To make all that should be killed to crawl

While others say don’t hate nothing at all

Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark

As human gods aim for their mark

Make everything from toy guns that spark

To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark

It’s easy to see without looking too far

That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates

Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

Goodness hides behind its gates

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged

It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge

And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con

You into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear

You suddenly find you got nothing to fear

Alone you stand with nobody near

When a trembling distant voice, unclear

Startles your sleeping ears to hear

That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit

Yet you know there is no answer fit

To satisfy, insure you not to quit

To keep it in your mind and not forget

That it is not he or she or them or it

That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools


I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must bow down to authority

That they do not respect in any degree

Who despise their jobs, their destinies

Speak jealously of them that are free

Cultivate what they do to be

Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized

To strict party platform ties

Social clubs in drag disguise

Outsiders they can freely criticize

Tell nothing except who to idolize

And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire

Gargles in the rat race choir

Bent out of shape from society’s pliers

Cares not to come up any higher

But rather get you down in the hole

That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault

On anyone that lives in a vault

But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs

Limited in sex, they dare

To push fake morals, insult and stare

While money doesn’t talk, it swears

Obscenity, who really cares

Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see

With a killer’s pride, security

It blows the minds most bitterly

For them that think death’s honesty

Won’t fall upon them naturally

Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed

Graveyards, false gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

4 comments

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    • Edger on October 24, 2010 at 02:29

    To get him to feel more assured

    Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence

    After poisoning him with words…

  1. Although I do not believe we, homosapiens, will accomplish the evolutionary standards which are currently upon us, the standards which demand that we accomplish proper adaptation or die, I cannot accept the nihilistic statement that there is no sense in trying to understand.

    Evolution is now the Evolution of Consciousness.  Our chances of ‘understanding’ this and of, therefore, surviving, are now slim, but still possible.  Therefore, I submit this poem written while listening to Dylan’s “It’s All Right Ma…” at full volume and watching the 1968 Democratic National Convention with sound turned off…

      FOR THE HOLLOW MEN ON APRIL FIRST

                by: Sydney Vilen

       This is the way the world ends

       This is the way the world ends

       This is the way the world ends

       Not with a whimper

       For we are too indignant, mad

       To grow to death without a rage

       Knowing that instead of life

       We’ve bartered youth and will and dream

       For the comfort of secure old age

       To read the business, perhaps obituary page.  

       Not with a whimper will it end

       For we have heard the mermaids sing

       The secret same unending theme

       Between the newsprint, in the magazine.

       Not with a whimper will it end

       Nor with a bang, though some will find

       The final statement of their unborn souls in war

       Who knew that comfort could not kill desire

       Who heard the singing through the mortar fire

       Who heard the singing of a human choir

       In mermaid voices far beyond this scar.

       We have listened, heard them as they sang

       And listen still to hear again

       Oh, see the boy gone wild

       Who heard them singing each to him

       And, hooked on song

       Lay down beside the stream

       Enraptured in immortal dream

       And let the rest of mankind trouble by

       Unnoticed in his single eye

       And died insane

       Although the vision was not wrong.

       And see the sinner at the stove

       The black man in the almond grove

       The face beyond the window, near the door

       Who turned around and sang it to the poor

       And singing, wondered if he should ask more

       Of whom it was he sang to

       And whom it was who sang.

       We have seen the golden crested bower bird

       We have heard the mermaids sing

       We have dreamt this dream forever

       And will never be the same.

       Then

       Narcissus split the shadow

       When he returned an hour ago

       In beggar’s rags and ermine stole

       His eyes did take a mirror’s toll

       With his heart in his hand as he came.

       And he put it out at auction

       And the black man made a bid

       And the sinner threw his ace in

       And the mad boy rose from the dead

       And they all got up together

       As the world was beginning to end

       And they danced in a circle together

       As the prickly pear started to grin

       And they all knelt down together

       And they did not need a mirror

       As they wept eternal laughter

       Drowning out both bang and whimper

                        in that

               Solemn   Sacred   Howling

                      Recognition

                Of         You         Too!

      This was posted previously in a comment at DD and on 10/16/10 at the blog ‘Writing in the Raw’.

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