Poem #16--Follow the Burning Rainbow

Follow the burning rainbow to a pot of plastic pennies
you seek the milk of human kindness
but there is not any;
fair Helen, chained, is made to plow
proud Pegasus, a gelding now
Apollo's chariot is black
Orion has a broken back.

Yet youthful folly will insist
it still sees legends in the mist
where fairy tales are very real
and happy endings still exist.

Follow the severed skyline to a place where eagles die
the very brook and wood corrupt,
the sun, a cataracted eye;
the winds of change have lost their stride
the moon no longer rules the tide
the oceans fester like a sore
infected to the planet's core.

And hope is but an inmate
in a prison none can ever breach
and loyalties are sandy spires
of castles built upon a beach.

Follow the heavy hail of stones to a kingdom made of glass
the human river floods its banks
and hatred grows like grass;
the bureaucratic beasts are bred
their fiber optic veins run red
all they know is rich or poor
and all they ever want is more.

And comfort is a coffin lid
the shuts the noise out when you've died
when paradise has been revoked
the graveyard's where you'll go to hide.

Follow the spyglass vector to the depths of outer space
in search of something new to kill
to thrill the human race
which, by its own hand, bears a curse
the touch of Midas in reverse;
we glorify ourselves as lords
then slip and fall upon our swords.

And the rainbow is a conflagration
trailing smoke and crashing down
and no one even watched it fall
or mourned it when it hit the ground.