Because
a palace and a wife
Could not comfort PILATE
who wrung his hands in vain
but could not shut-up his heart
and because dead clouds are blown
by unforgiving winds everywhere,
over palaces and and homeless mens'dumps alike
bring no relief for the pain
of an unmitigated, unrelenting conscience
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Because
anger stirred the heart of Moses
a fire more hot than the idiots used
to melt their gold and sell their souls
to a new system of song and dance
around expensive dead things
"vanity of vanities," as the great teacher cried,
and because man alive, today,
when vanity is still king, and meanness too...
when we protect the protected
and infect the infected...
who is man enough , that is, to care,
must catch fire at all the revolting things
he hears and sees and sometimes - does himself...
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and because
rockstars and beauty queens
on magazines and tv shows
who bear all to all and are ashamed of nothing
are not so bold as the bold-faced king,
King David, who danced in his ephod
before the LORD and all of Israel
but who's joy was more embarrassing
to his tight lipped queen
than his indecent display
and because today
there are yet men and women
who have the seed of praise
buried within their souls
or long for something sprouting there
that they could sing forever
about wonderful, divine, eternal things
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And
because Abraham and Sarah
Father of The stars
and daughter of the faithful son
saw in the dark of a barren womb
smelled in the jaws of an enemy's arid
God-forsakened
land
the breath of favor
the seed of green and growing things
and left all they possessed
of flocks and families, streams and silver,
but their hopeless hope
in the promise of a distant and invisible God
and so gained more than a land
of milk and honey that could still spoil and sour
or a chosen people with lust and lies
still poisoning their hearts
but honor, glory,
generation upon generation of new creations
to look forever in respect and love
to these two parents in the sky
And because anyone who is looked poverty
deep into it's answerless maw
in these poor and selfish times
and lack for certainty, too,
that supply would ever meet demand again
but still hoped, still hoped for this and more
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BECAUSE!
BECAUSE! BECAUSE!
Because, I don't even know
if this man's heart and ears
are not dry and dead and filled with stones
if his wrong answer will not come
more quickly to his mind
than the scream for help inside his heart
If I will even see him again
sitting in his begging chair
to pass along this wordy convoluted mess
to that sack of smell and skin and bones
but I know and I know and I know
that Abraham and David
nor any man in all of history
had a chance in all-deserving hell
if God did not love them
and make away back through his Son
A N D ....
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