A Test with a New Poem --Austin Givens

I know its abstract, and a lot of gray hairs have told me to avoid abstractions at all times. But, I mean just don't take things so seriously. I wanted to create something that hangs in the air this time around. not necessarily something that sits in your living room. A poem that tries to live in the space between the freeway overpass and a loaded semi-truck. Mostly I am trying to test out a new clean html word converter in order to fix this vertical poem thing going on at almost every blog. If anyone out there knows some sort of solution, please help. No wonder no one spaces their poems like the modernists.

My Poor Feet, Gone again, Round the Bend

 

With silver in your soul, won't you come ask me again?

        I can't stand

                the rest of the world

        without you in it.

                With silver in your soul,

                                 I will walk again tomorrow.

 

I got a letter,

        a voice from the devil, when I was finally doing fine.

I got a letter,

        a whisper from the howling wind,

                 eating the moon spying on our

                        naked forms at midnight.

 

It said something about starving twins in China

It said something about our circus show and occupations

It said something about a poetic spirit in the snow

It said something that sounded like ash three hundred years after its fire

        the fire where it glowed and danced

                and rose and fell with a mothers tears.

 

And I'm just wondering what kind of golden child you can have

with letters chained around our neck.

With letters hanging from our neck

With judges tying letters around our neck

with death just neath' a hole in the gallows.

 

I don't have to stay, and neither do you

        We're all just hound dogs by mid-day.

I don't have to stay, and neither do you

        They will put blood on our teeth

                and we will hunt outlaws

They will burn books and letters and homes of outlaws with children and mothers

        and they will use our noses

they will make us wander till we die in the mud.

                

 

I got a letter, a whisper from the shadow of the wind:

        What shall we do? What shall we do?