Poem 256

Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters as Bob Dylan would have it – anyone who claims to have a handle on the chaos of life is lying …  this is in the mode of my earlier rhyming style but in fact was written much later, in 1987 or thereabouts …

… it’s meant to be kind of amusing …

Panic

I dreamed the sky exploded
in a fiery plunging rain
I was caught in a crowd of fleeing
as through the streets they came

we stopped beneath a rooftop
where a man threw down his words
as flame leapt on every tree
and the air filled up with birds

he said he'd sailed in ships
on every distant sea
and nowhere now was safe
nowhere now was free

he shouted in the wind
that was rising in his teeth
there was no need to run
we could all live with death

he told us go back unafraid
to our houses and our farms
sleep secure in knowing
only if meant would we come to harm

the crowd nodded and murmured
and some called out his name
then a meteorite took his head off
we began to run again