Blessed be those who
      strip off their scalps and skulls and pants
      and stand bare-assed and bare-brained
      on the steps of City Hall,
      where they sing and weep and
      dance naked for the gaping crowd
      because the price of truth is blood.

Blessed be those who,
      among the debris of twinkies and quarts of beer,
      their hearts broken by imagining with a purpose,
      write with pencil stubs on used pizza boxes
      lines that burn.

Blessed be those who
      hold high the banner of mellifluity
      above the talons of the prosaic hordes,
      who know that, if screen doors were not so named,
      something else would have to be,
      and who know banana and Mombasa and sillion
      as gifts from the gods.

Blessed be those who
      wake up sweating in the January night
      and scribble with erasable bics
      on the cracking window shades
      dreams of foxfire and neon streets that breathe.

Blessed be those who
      eat their own blood and share it
      because they are the slaves of words
      and sacrifice their firstborn
      for the masters that they love.

Blessed be those who
      expose the secrets of
      the flickering synapses of their souls,
      compelled to sky write them
      in the guileless blue
      above puritan villages
      and cities that work.

Blessed be those who
      can hear when they are sung to,
      and who wait in patience
      and pray that the poet
      does not die intestate.

Copyright © 2000 by Denis M. Garrison