It’s a jungle out there

The rain is falling in torrents,
Somewhere high above Spring’s pitcher
tips and the water cascades over
the rim of the mile high clouds.
Creatures are draped in soaked
giant Elephant Ear  leaves .
The plain is festooned with mushrooms,
umbrellas clutched against the wind.
All the hippopotamuses, rhinos, and
wildebeests mix with the sharks,
the lions and birds of paradise.
The herd is on the move, sloshing,
Snorting at the elephants waiting
on the other side of the crossing.
A monkey wearing white gloves
whistles at the multitude and waves.
Another trail fills with scrambling
leather and rubber clad hooves.
There is no sound from them,
they do not exchange glances or
touch, their space never shared.
But, there is fear in their eyes.
Fear that instead of eating,
they will be the ones eaten.
It’s a jungle out there, in the city.

Copyright: 2010, Donald Harbour

Obiturary for the City on the Hill

The City on the Hill had a patchwork of alleys
each built to contain the cesspools of life,
the trash piles of human moral and ethical decay.
Its leaders in chrome plated tatterdemalion
visages slink across grimy, oil slick streets
paved with millions of broken lost and damned souls.

Power hungry oratorical minions scribe bombastic
ego pontification on sacred tabliture
to mimic salvation. Forgotten and deplete
memories of truth, justice have fallen
from the villas of governance reason
to mingle with all manner of insanity caricatures.
Stringed puppets to the real unseen masters.

The megalopolis swallows the essence of reality
through a toothless mouth formed by a culture of greed.
Unrecognized, all the antiquated artifacts
of false ritual are sucked up from corpus burial
preserved by tribal partisans to remain
untouched, indigestible, incomprehensible, illogical.
Society’s clock is ticking, measuring their worth.

Where are the civil guards, who will now wield
the mighty sword that protects the City gate?
Pompous, fat, lazy, the uninformed serfs scream
obscenities at their children, house, yard, dirt of earth.
Their minds have lost meditation on meaning
all while the body politic resurfaces with a plan
thrown to the mongrel scavenger media, hollow food.

One chosen repeats “I know how, I can do this”.
“Blood,” growl the multitudes to their information boxes.
The other chosen vacillates,”We need change, that’s what
I’ll do.” Change to what? The brilliant dilapidated
City on the Hill is lacking, tenuously built
with minimal minds from scavenge jettison and
the forgettable words of promise, of hope.

Some thought the City on the Hill beacon would burn forever.
But no, the living met a nexus in time: extinction.
Uninformed, mindful only of their fantasy beliefs,
they quarreled while opportunity rushed into the future
leaving the City behind, lacking the will or desire
to survive it ceased, the light has faltered and dimmed.
Without light the City on the hill consumed itself, died.

Copyright: 2008, Donald Harbour