The Poets Poem by robert dickerson

We might sleep and loll away our days
And never care-why should we? (It's
All gonna fade, as the song says)
Make it our biggest job to roll
From side to side, over and over,
Practice the metier tri-partite
Of laughing, working skill and shedding light
And burying each other;
Knowing secret doors and passageways,
Scoring, oh, and then like Zorro
Folding into night to reappear as Don Diego;
Skewer Opposition, Reason's cheese,
Enjoying it's inconsistencies,
Keeping every day from out harm's way
Play against the odds; knowing the quarrels are not ours,
(Eighty billion, now, and growing)
After all, and Life can be quite right
Without a ball and chain,
Knowing a less desperate plan;
Work, adoring them that came before
What more is living for-? ;
But that we hear the roaring in the night
Of superstitious bores
Laughable, insane,
That fill the brush-poets
Who dote on us, although they never know it
(And there's alot of them) :
Til called upon to fight, that is,
Till something takes us from the rack
Oils us, cracks us, levels us, aims
And in a spurtle of blue flame
Fires,
Bang, you bore, now please expire. Violence
In that sole sense a meaning and an end
(Sweet irony. We grow by opposition)
Having having. 'Good shot'', say friends
Good shot, bad shot, gut shot,
Faith, it matters not, or does it?
Is the picture more exquisite than the frame?
Your choice-or is it? Foolish blamer, foolish blame
Never winge and whine and cower-
Hitting the mark's the game's name:
Ready! Aim! Fire!