Promises Of Golden Rain (For Leonard, Again) Poem by Frank Bana

You wrote your book of longing
Took down the songs of mercy
Every style of tenderness
Was in your verse exalted

Go you now to write
The last song of redemption
Before it is too late
To sing its vast refrain

You old bastard, Leonard
You faithlessly transcribed
The sacred rhymes and litanies
Of holy damaged lives
Leaving us to seduce the ones
Whom you long abandoned
At second hand, with only
Your creations at our side

The poems with the raven eyes
And songs that stare from telegraph wires
Lured me into darkness
With promises of golden fire

I'm sorry to hear you lost your mother
And I know you miss your father
To be alone is always very hard
Will you leave us orphaned now
Drowning in laments
And pieties of priests and prison guards

You were right about one thing
They always lock up the wrong men
And we are still at war
With the religious and the carnivore
Chauvinists and feminists
And all who wish to strangle love
Of its final poetry and breath

You were right, I'll give you that
I bring you this, an offering
A poem you never sought
And will never swear a moment by
From a man so cheaply bought
And still enslaved as I.