Passage
Illuminated soul, glowing love
Old man whiskey stained shirt
Reflecting years of drunken sorrow
Sleeping on sidewalk, covered in print
The papers headlines reading,"2000,
boom year."
Gentle face soft lines etched in portrait
of saint
Simplicity realized in daily meals at the
soup kitchen
Golden years dreamlike
In the French Quarter mystique
Finding human kindness in quarters
Dropped in quaint stove pipe hat
Eyes misty in fogged contemplation
Of childhood picnic neath
the old oak tree
Blissful lapsing into timeless meditation
of God's
Unlimited love of trees, flowers, children
Wishing he was twelve sitting in front of Victrola
Listening to Louis Armstrong in the
soulful night
But content to hear Dixieland
As staggering tourists trip over splayed
legs
Ah, what dreams light the night with lightening
In the phantom evening of the apocalypse
His thoughts wander over the
Following Abraham's bearded visage
Over ruins of ancient cities
Lost in the wilderness of visions
The signs of the end are everywhere
The lost souls seeking oblivion
In smoky bar rooms
Women selling their precious wares
To men already dead
Sad eyed children pulled by parents
Through the valley of the shadow of death
Strip joints drawing soul weary men
Into paradise of the mind
People bought and sold on the auction
block
Just like from time immemorial
He thinks he is an old horse, beaten and
tired
His final ride into the sunset
Marked by trumpets blaring
As fallen angels lead him
Across the shrieking sirens
Into the Promised Land
