Jeff Burt Verse-Virtual 2017 May

May 2017

There are two types of freedom, freedom from like FDR orated, and freedom for, freedom to do, emancipation. This poem is a freedom from poem, begun as a prayer of anguish and remaining as one.

Monogram

Men, set the mothers and daughters free.
Where the sun shines hard, there is no light. Eyes close.

So take the wind-bewildered pamphlets down
that promised the last liberating treason,

take the vowels and untie the words
so that they may be used again,

take the mother in the street home
to her boy’s vacant bed

and let her lie in the valley his body made
before he sold his life for promises

and fame and kept neither,
take the grief from her shoulders

like a prayer shawl and fold it
so she can use it for her daughter

who walks the streets where guitars sing
and bullets condition the air,

take her wail and return the broken notes
to birds that they may mend them,

take down the worried beads on the nail
in the wall worn by calloused fingers

to a sleek surface like a horse brushed daily,
take the book of prayer and place it on the table

and remove the ribbon of placement
from the pages for there is no longer a passage

that will free her, take her
from darkness to illumination