The Puritan Box

We dwell in the Puritan Box

sex and dollars its decorative theme

Windows absent like schools built to block

the remnant of stale cologne floating ev'rywhere

This is Pilgrim's progress 

beauty eluding needs of soul

The realm of myst'ries falling deeper and drear

fathoms below our Imaged goals

Here scientists wince to stand in awe

for silence is the word not spoke

their cheap trash cov'ring ev'rything

like wallpaper cov'ring a shameful plot

It's a vulgar poverty

a homelessness without God

no touch of human affection

no dance as the piano's played

only stiffness that death understands

such that a morgue creates

with freezing clime of a guarded home

a society drowned in its lusts for funds

Who would brave to open the door

expel the zombies polluting the air?

The entry could be a birthplace for life

swinging wide that the filth might pass

a trembling gate awaiting rain

a touch of affection that God could journey in

*Reflections of Sidney Poitier:

-Brent Staples did a piece in the New York Times not long ago saying that when white kids run amok, it's time for soul-searching in America, a time to figure out our ills.  But the problems of black kids always remain "other" and somehow apart. 

-The laws off economics don't promote idealism or higher consciousness.  The logic of profit and loss in a market-driven culture reduces the grandeur of the human species down to our role, that of "consumers".  And all along, the pleasure principles is saying, I have products I can sell you to take care of all that.  You can get it online.  Come, come.  I have even more thrills to show you.

We're not nearly as strong as our mothers and fathers were.