Steven P Clum

 

 

 

Youthful Enterprise

 

 

Back when life was still in 3-D

 

Ere the dawn of cable and color.

 

Where the industries of boyhood youth,

 

Would beat the pavement for coveted buck.

 

Was a boy who looked not unlike me.

 

Who slung over shoulder shovel or rake,

 

And cold-called many a neighbor to their door.

 

Bashfully pleading his services with assumed liability,

 

Before tending to task and learning of life’s lessons.

Steven Clum

 

 

“Relentless Robin”

 

 

All hail the bitter fruit of our failed loins,

 

Spoon -fed, codified and watered down.

 

 

Wiping their selfish backsides with ballots.

 

Lady Liberty burdened by weight of free ride.

 

Looks down, pitifully upon those flourishing maggots

 

 

Gnawing at the many hands that feed them,

 

Pillaging the achievers and Noblesse oblige’d.

 

Until they flock, en masse, to far away lands;

 

exempt from Robin’s contrived tithing.

 

As the vacuous souls occupy forfeited abodes,

 

And relish the perpetually dry-docked flotilla.

 

While all of the cogs in all of the wheels

 

are forever and anon, irreparable.

 

Commoners vanquish a compromised ground.

 

Where the light eternally flickers, dimly.

 

 

 

Broken Lyric

 

A box top, a coupon, a drop in the bucket.

 

A ticket, a silver scratch-off,

 

A fleeting hope, then chuck-it.

 

The evil that lies is the evil that lurks.

 

Feeding our complacency until we no-longer work.

 

Gored

Muted, reduced and marginalized.

Ere the dawn of what is global, macro and far-removed.

We could taste, see and smell all of our impurities.

Cluttered now, by clinical, mundane equation and theorem.

Mired by the scope of science.

The comforting distance of both time and space.

Feigns to buy us more time than we think.

Gives us solace from what tickles our feet,

Poisons our stomach, corrodes our minds and lungs.

This, the more immediate and obvious tragedy.

Now supplanted by an elitist, grey poupon.

Which smacks of a self-serving, ulterior motive.

Creating a sphere of relativity.

For long before our excrement, zenith- bound, lands.

Shall it choke and poison those innocent bystanders,

Whose pulse on life is no-less worthy,

Their ignorance, our bliss.

As we discard the remains, of our creature comfort world.

The grim reaper grows impatient.

Knocking on our nickel and dime- composite door.

The windows of which, a glass darkly, he sees no green.

Only a woefully, insufficient, token movement.

Self-proclaimed puritans whom, daily digress.

Slaves to a battery, a switch, and ride.

Looking for the forest through the trees.

Hey, it’s the pollution…stupid!