Founders and Fathers -5/09/06

You’re a jackal and a juggernaut,
A stranger and a self.
You’re the man who bought Manhattan
For a twenty and a pelt.
But the towers that once towered there
Once towered in the dreams
Of those you stole that island from
In long past centuries.

You’re a beggar and a businessman,
A cynic and a saint.
You’re the man who deals in Dow Jones dollars,
Representing honest trades.
But when the dreams we dared to dream
Have all been labeled, boxed and shelved,
And all the dreamers softly die:
What then will you find to sell?

You’re spiritual and self-absorbed,
A socialist with wealth.
You’re the man who marched for matricide
And called it “public health”.
But, in your faddish moralizing,
All your fading morals shine
As “practice what you preach” regresses
From your Pepsi paradigm.

A member and a misanthrope,
A vassal and a vote,
Again the tundra calls my name
With northern seas uncut by boat.
Again the whale-song calls me
From windswept, barren shores.
I cast off sycophantic society
And DIVE down deep to rise no more,

AND I SING.