Into the Light

I hope it's clear where the lines of text are supposed to end - For some reason they didn't fit on one line this time - I guess they are particularly long.

This is a continuation of/ sequel to "Homeless". The final scene, the funeral, is shot in a kind of soft focus, the bright outdoor light of Arlington Cemetery almost blinding, like what we imagine heaven to be; imagine, not know. "Know" is a very interesting verb to me. It's a state verb, so not normally used progressively, because knowing is not something we actively engage in, we either do or we don't - And our human arrogance means we often think we do, when actually do not. There is a strong streak of irony running through my stuff and I recommend it be read in ironic, often mocking disgusted tone, such as lines 3-6 of the first stanza below - Not obligatory, potentially amusing. I have made reference to eternal entities like Nature and the Universe and Time mocking us pathetic little specks and that puts me in mind of state/ action, or, more specifically, passive/ active. So here, in this poem, the very first two lines use "know" and "remind" in a grammatically conventional way, instead of for example saying: "The whizzing traffic knows us daily", to mean it reminds us. It would be interesting to play with the syntax and see if one would pull this off, as if the state of knowing, of knowledge, can be transmitted, osmosis. You know when you've been tangoed.

Deliver Us

We are all so far far beyond salvation and we know it, we know it every day.
We are reminded daily by the whizzing traffic and the onward march of grime
so it is nice, nice to be scruffed up by Humanity, once in a while, you know,
it's nice isn't it, the clarion call of those few who were once outside the kingdom
the kingdom of laundered cloth, forever and never, nice for the man to notice
to make use of his nevereending influence to reach down and entitle and bestow
and endow and bring in to fold, to fold in to the glimpsed glory, beholden are we all.

In glimpsing the snug world of the speaker, of the vox, the spokesman, we might be
seduced and in our intoxicated state dream that this trapping is the kingdom
but though the voicer grabbed us up and deposited us within feet of the seat
beside the flower of power the oval of office, this is not the glory nor forever is it
novel yes, eternal no; for thine is not the kingdom of anything, deliver us ye shall not,
cannot; inside with the insiders, once the gleam wears off, the cloth is thin as the glimpse
and we take account, approaching the truth, the benign line, that all behold and none know.