Take Your Pick ~ Philip Brent Harris When I have fallen to the blows Lie in the gutter; no one knows, Struggle to stand up on my own, Refuse to take help from anyone. What shall I do? What shall I do? Since none can begin To live without any sin. If I shall be forgotten by kith and kin, And lie awake, nowhere to begin, Out daily, pretending I have a destination Neither high nor low, but I am a close relation. Still, I have travelled all the roads Enjoyed brief company, felt the goads, Chased from highways by local cops No $200.00, don’t cross Go, But only stops. I’ve met others On the same journey, aware, Our quest over land, To reach what we dared. Parted for a time, then joined once again, Together. Mere acquaintance Now seen as friend. Some parted or settled down, others found, Somewhere close, On a new stomping ground. What shall I do? What shall I do? Since none can live Without any sin. When I have sought Great reward, won the fight by battling hard, it makes me No different than anyone, No more likely To answer the call. Always having less But wanting more, Rich, with a guard beside my door. I, like all, was naked born, And time my history will suborn. Until ashes, dirt or dust are mine, New chances written in every line. The choice is always Mine to make, To smile and give Or frown and take. Whatever lessons I have learned, To know what mattered, Why I yearned. What shall I do then? What shall I do then? Since none can live Without any sin. Will you greet me when I depart, Wave hello before I start? Will you help me find my path Crunch the numbers, do the math? Might you run so far ahead, I can no longer see you, Wonder where you have sped? Till I fear my journey only mine, Yet, find you waiting When I cross the line? Know I’ll see you Rain or shine. We’ll talk and laugh and On ambrosia dine. Shall I know what to do then, Whether I quit, or I begin, Be together, enjoy our friends, And lovers As we hunt, Gather or simply fend? Sin is such a freighted word, Mistakes I made, What’s been misheard. So, I shall always wait for you, Would choose to walk Side-by-side; I do. You will lift me up When I am down. I will always know where Sunshine may be found. Son and daughter, Father and mother. For we are all, and Walk with all together, Shall I sing praise to creation, when I imagine what will be; Remembering all that has been. Knowing neither Where nor how, Yet, I am well-aware There is only now. What shall I do then? What shall I do then? Since none can live Without any sin.

My desk sits by the window, covered in cat hair. One chair leg is short, makes it wobble when I sit. These, my poor excuses for my daily shirking bit, So I go to check the frig, but I find there only air. Everywhere I go I ride my bike with two flat tires, Mostly to my local supermarketdrugstorebankcafe, Where I can find everything I want, or so they say, If all my needs are filled by junk that soon expires. So I stock up on sundries, coffee, drugs and booze. True essentials to keep my time-filled life so sunny, Especially true now because I have so little money. Oh wait, it seems I’ve nothing left to buy my food. At least the local water still seems to come for free. It’s fracked, I know; I will always get a bill to pay. I will light them both, to heat my house, and pray. As I eke out yet another sad, wasted day, sans fee. I can hear you laugh, chortle, snigger, snort, giggle. No fee, you say. How can you be such a simple fools? My bill: stress, strain, hunger, fear; the system rules, I’m on an angler’s hook from which I cannot wriggle. Wait, the bookstorebakerycardshopbookie tempts. Brings me distraction, craving, condolences, hope; Swapping sense, savvy for the latest soup or soap. All will wait there, end to end; none can be exempt. So I wait my turn midst commerce’s jangling ring, Hearing what they say to do, to buy, to be, to think, Battling against the beast, ever closer to the brink, Hoping my feeble cries others to their senses bring. If voices join to voices, strength to strength together, So we reach the tipping point; it’s there, never fear. Their water cannons can’t wash us all away, is clear, Until the pressure we bring results in better weather. Now the cat hair’s on my pants, the drapes, the floor. My wayward chair shimmed level with a random bill; I don’t think it said past due, but not long until it will. My words sent through the air, to add a pebble more.

Variations on a theme by T.S. Elliott Let us slow then, you and I. When vile emissions spread out across the sky, The ether that lays us upon the table; Let us skulk through fear-deserted lanes, The smoldering remains Of soulless nights in one-night cheap brothels. And raw rust juggernauts and mortar shells; Streets that follow past the seediest tenement, Too usurious to rent, To lead you to an overwhelming bastion, … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us leave ere made to visit In the room the women all have gone, No longer talking of anyone. The fetid smog that scrubs its wrack upon the russet stains, The blood-red smoke that scrubs its muzzle on your windblown pains Flicked its tongue into the mourners of the evening, Lingered upon the fools that beat the drums, Let fall onto it black soot, that falls from enemies, Whipped by the barracks, turning up the heat And perceiving it was a hard October night, Curled once around the mice, began to eat. And in time there will be need For no poison smog that elides every street, Rubbing its black into the sinner’s stains. There will be need, there will be need, To wear a face-mask before faces that you beat. There will be need to shudder and repeat, When greed robs all the perks and lays of lands That lift and strop aggression till you’re late; Need to spew and deed for fee, And need yet for ten hundred prisons and divisions, Before they take your friends and family. In the room the women all have gone, No longer talking of anyone. And in time there will be need To ponder, “Do I swear?” and “Do I swear?” Need to turn back and ascend the track, With a target in the middle of my back--- (They will say, “Now his wit is merely grin!”) A worn old goat, why bother, spurned sup from a dumpster bin, My necktie torn and ragged, but a belt around a waist too thin--- (They will say, “But how he harms and begs are sin!”) Do I care, Resort to nonsense verse? Sin can limit; where the need For excisions and revisions a limit will make worse. For I have sung hymns all already, sung him all; Have sung the evening's mourning's aftermaths, I have parceled out my strife, no hope or laughs. I show the choices, trying with a crying call, Beneath the music of a far-out toon. See how grow I jejune? And I have known the whys already, known them all--- The whys that trick you with cheap formulaic praise, And when I am inebriated, staggering on gin Then how have I no sin? Do without all the smut-trends of my phrase and gaze. And now grow I jejune. And I have known the arms already, known them all--- Arms that are bracketed, light and spare (But in the streetlight, aimed most anywhere!) Is it odor from a shell That makes me sow unwell? Arms that lie across a table or racked around a room And then should I resume? And how have I no sin? Will I pay, to have done that bust, under your street And snatched the coke that disguises sewers Of lonely folk with heart hurts grieving beneath our feet? Should I have seen the lairs of jagged maws Struggling to kill the mores of silent peace. And the oil tycoon, with breast heaving, hums relentlessly, Stroked by strong figures, Take acquired … by the blasphemers. Scratched on the floor, from inside traders flee. Should I after pleas and fakes and vices, Save the winks, deplore government and its prices? Shut out, I have slept and lasted, crept and preyed. Stoned I may dream like dead (prone, ghostly, mute); caught in goop, will it splatter? I make no profit---and hear no brave patter. I have been the torment of my faithless ticker And I have been the infernal Boatman, bold my boat and slicker, Stand on shore; why snatch decayed? And could I have come forth, sat on the wall, After the quips, the harm I’ve made, the spree, Among the barristers, after some balk, refuse to see? Could I cave, sneeze, snort, smile, To rave, pissed off, the latter all the while, To wheeze the eunuch verse without a fall To extol shit to a dumb, overbearing, blank face, You bray thy spam nightly, dumb, glib disgrace, Some lack to sell us all, you shall sell us all”--- If one, holding a pillow on my face, Would bray, “What is not that I repent, at all; What is it not, at all” And could wit make mean, cursed, laughter meat? Could grit scrape clean my pride? After the cheap wine, and the alley, and the littered street, After the hovels, after the pain pills, after the rants that make us want to hide--- Or miss, but blow the scene. It’s unprofitable to pay lust that I screen! But as if a laser lightshow threw the nerves in patterns on the wall; Could it have seen worse style? If one, holding down a pillow or relishing a brawl And spurning to warn the greeter Would bray, “What is not that I repent, at all; What is it not, at all?” No! I am not a rich mogul, nor have spent to seem; Am an accountant, bored, one that will do To shill a prospect, part some green from you, Advise the boss, no doubt, a sleazy fool, Reverential, sad to be obtuse, Wholly thick, nauseous, and meretricious, Dull, blighted conscience, not a bit of use; At times, in need, at most vermicules--- At most, the slime you drool. I grow cold… I grow cold… Shall I wear my best when in my coffin rolled, Shall I first pursue my cause? Do I dare to test my reach? Shall I wear the rebel trousers and charge into the breach? I have heard the cannons roaring, each to each I do but shrink; death they sing, no plea. I have seen them smoking, melting from the heat. Bombing the lowest in the country’s lack, When the world falls upon them, harsh attack. We malingered in the numbers so elite, Sly call-girls, wreathed with cigar smoke, undone. Till greedy choices break us, and we’re gone. https://twitter.com/lifenart1 https://www.facebook.com/phil.harris.549 https://thepensmight.com/