You heard it said about, ‘the fool on the hill’
nobody and nothing in this world really cares.
‘be kind to yourself,’
an old friend used to say,
‘nobody else will, will they’?
Down the decades I have thought about those words,
their truth and their deep penetrating pain.
And now a constant succession of days
plays out on my parade of history,
where roy orbison sings, ‘only the lonely’
and lennon laments with ‘working class hero’.
Truth is gathering flies,
and a yawning soldier
makes a pretence that peace will come.
Battlegrounds illuminated by hell fire,
so many people believing the excuses they live by,
in a vast atomic decadence,
they worship their conclusions,
while their music heroes turn everything sour,
trying to reach the limits of romantic sentiment.
Choirs where born again christians
indulge their addiction and fantasies,
being fed peanuts as they watch the show.
I am banished from the mind of it all.
Tortured eyes see, all feeling ceases
as visions beyond beauty
loom out on cemetery road,
and the fool on the hill
smiles all knowing at me.