Tag Archives: fortune

Heaven or Las Vegas

for Elvis Presley

Well, the coroner he figured
no one’s hand was on the trigger,
so there really wasn’t anyone to blame.
Call him a victim of his fame;
we know what killed him, just the same.

Never mind his fiercest critics
called him his own Chappaquidick.
We convinced him he was well enough to drive;
went along just for the ride:
we each committed regicide.

Whether it’s heaven or Las Vegas,
chances are you’ll never win;
playing the house is big gamble:
the odds are always pretty slim.
Pauper or king it doesn’t matter
in the end, which one you choose:
whether it’s heaven or Las Vegas,
either way you’re bound to lose.

A symbol of our generation:
vanity, and the frustration
of becoming bigger than what came before.
We stood screaming at the door,
always wanting from him more.

And we locked him in a palace,
made his microphone a chalice,
and his youth a trophy case for rock and roll.
Never mind the tears, the burden on his soul.
And we blamed him when he went out of control.

The choice was heaven or Las Vegas;
both are illusions based on sin;
playing the house is big gamble:
the odds are always pretty slim.
Pauper or king it doesn’t matter
in the end, which one you choose:
whether it’s heaven or Las Vegas,
either way you’re bound to lose.

Well, the coroner he figured
no one’s hand was on the trigger,
just another case of privilege gone too far:
one more supernova that we call a star
to avoid looking at who we really are.

13 FEB 2007

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Untitled: an amphigory

She flung away rapscallion locks,
two dozen rare embroidered socks
of carded wool from royal flocks
as priceless as the chicken pox
for separating poofs from jocks
and as her jaw was full of rocks
said, “if good fortune comes, and knocks,
and would remove life’s pains and shocks,
please let it know the privvy crocks
are in sore need of dumping.”

Alack a-day, the world will spin
and at dawn start up once again;
and win or lose and come what may
you laugh or sing alack a-day

To which her stolid beau replied,
“You’ve grace and charm, that’s undenied,
but some things are beneath my pride,”
and further, as if an aside,
he whispered, soft, and slow, and snide,
“and furthermore, this eventide
I plan to stage a suicide
that will slow, if not stop, the ride,
which others methods, failed when tried,
have with good conscience been applied
so much that it’s hard to decide
which way the wind is jumping.”

Alack a-day, the wheels will roll
from dusk until the dawn patrol;
you live and learn enough to say
c’est la vie or alack a-day

18 OCT 2005

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The Shelter of Righteousness

What good was in the world has gone,
if we proclaim, with innocence,
that justice has escaped our grasp,
while our hands show no sign of fight
and, at the end of stiffened arms
held at our sides, are soft and smooth.

And if those cloaks with which we hide
ourselves from other seeking eyes
do not after long years of wear
reveal at least a trace of mud,
perhaps it does no good to claim
our journey long and filled with strife.

Our eyes, that show no signs of stress
from endless nights by candle flame,
but still reflect an inner calm,
their focus fixed upon ourselves —
how dare we claim to see the prize
that others seek as merely dross.

With honeyed tongues, we speak of pain
as if it were a passing whim;
and would say it miraculous,
an intervention of the gods,
that our great struggle for the right
to live as we choose has found its end.

How smug and righteous we’ve become,
to think the universe so small
that it will measure its success
by how our fickle fortunes fall.
If we would claim all but us wrong,
what good was in the world has gone.

05 FEB 2005

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The Food (for Thought) of the Gods

Who decides what lives, what dies,
based on more than the needs of some,
but on what is best for the entire world
so balance can be maintained?

Who thinks they have the right to choose
that some should flourish while others fail,
that their kind is much more essential
and so deserves more space, more food?

The gods of course.

For only the gods act out of concern
for the whole; their own interests are not part
in any way of the actions made.

The point is this:

if you benefit in any way from a decision
to kill or not to kill today;
if you gain more ground, or food, or power
by taking others’ things away,
you’re not a god.

This is not your dominion.
You are not the most auspiciously born.
You are only a small part of the whole.

And if you act as if you’re a god,
without that knowledge,
you will only result in destroying everything.

You will fail.

And you will find excuses for your failure,
like “man is a fallen creature,
bound by sin to make mistakes”
because you don’t really think so —
you think man is a god,
and that the world just doesn’t work right.

Well, it just doesn’t work the way you think it does.

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Old Pottage

While you still have your youth
is the time to find out
your version of the truth;
as you age, fear and doubt
can crack the careful clay
of all your work and play.
Then in a heaping pile
of broken pottery,
you sit waiting to die
or win the lottery.

15 AUG 2003

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