Good and Evil

Watching the day fade from my east facing window. In the morning daylight floods this room, in late September it’s most ways around the house by 4:30. I keep thinking about that damn reunion. It keeps coming back to the state of my head. I tried focusing by writing a poem, wouldn’t even consider it if I had written more than eight poems in the last six years. Focus ain’t the way to approach something you want all shiny and pretty. Some poems should be shiny and pretty, but not the ones you focus on.

 

No, those might be best not seeing the light of day. It’s just a form of meditation. If my head and left paw could stand it, I’d play one of the dozen or so instruments I have around here. Improvising a song takes razor sharp focus, or, going all the way loose. Those have less to do with light of day than when the spirit moves you.

 

I was thinking about why I have so little love for my high school years and why others do. It wasn’t the years, it was the school. I liked the years and stayed away from the school. Not everything was good about the years, but I learned a lot more doing other things. I was thinking about good and evil. I have reason not to believe in either. Some of those reasons came during the years I wasn’t physically in high school.

 

I’ve seen a lot of evil shit and a lot of good shit, but I never seen a person or other creature that was all one or the other. I know, that’s hardly profound. In fact it’s so simple it doesn’t need to be said. Very Often. Here’s one of those poems that never should see the light of day. The chorus is from a song I wrote.

 

Don’t go trifling

With good and evil

Have you looking

At the world

Down the barrel of a gun.

Was doing a nickel

Down Jackson State;

Big man got religion.

Let an aryan brother slap his other cheek

Four times

Before he shivved him

In the guts.

Don’t go trifling with

Good and evil.

 

All they ever do

Is babble on

About the way they do

In Babylon.

 

Shook old dirty face

West of Fargo

Caught highway 2

Racing the TransCan.

Jesus Christ himself

Should have been there.

Heard the Devil

Whistling

Onward Christian soldiers.

Could be he don’t know the words;

Could be he wrote the song.

 

All they ever do

Is babble on

About the way they do

In Babylon.

 

It gets dark

Early this side

Of September.

There will be leaves piled,

Dogs and children using the last of their summer

Skin.

Some of them could go

Their whole lives

Without

Good and evil.

Others just wear it well.