Sunday, December 26, 2010

THE LUNACY OF HOPE?

by Steve Hellyard Swartz


The jester draped in moons and stars
Poses the question: Just How Far
Are we willing to go
Before we give up hope?
The jester and I were up at three
To watch the moon and the earth come between him and me
A sheep nearby said what the heck
And begin to ba-ba something from Brecht
Eine kleine Moon of Alabama
Talk turned as talk does to our old friend Obama
For three hours we three watched as the sky turned black
We watched, as we've watched, as the clock turned back
We watched, as we've watched, for something brilliant,
earth-shattering, life-changing, something golden and great,
to at long long last, start
The jester, the sheep, and me watched
As it just grew more dark


Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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