Straight Up The Crooked Down

 

The bearded barefoot vagabond

Has debts to settle in this town

With his tongue cocking the trigger

Of the voice they tried to drown

For each sin that tried to do him in

There’ll be a penance to be paid

Nowhere to cower or seek cover

And not one single inch of shade

 

Conscience bears its guilty crosses

While it commits its dreadful deeds

Every garden filled with flowers

Swallowed up by noxious weeds

Hear the bellow of earned reckoning

A deep and mournful wailing sound

As wrathful winds of retribution

Blow straight up the crooked down

 

There are no righteous paths to heaven

Nor infernal roads that lead to hell

The sentence is carried in the present

Where every king and pawn must dwell

The archer launched his poison arrow

That felled the master’s thorny crown

It tumbled toward the spiral chute

And fell straight up the crooked down

 

Utterances of preemptive parables

Oversold intentions seldom bought

A tenuous bridge of weathered threads

Separates the practice from the thought

False smiles flash with numbing vacancy

While souls are saddled with deep frown

Lurking alone within the narrow walls

That rise straight up the crooked down

 

                                      

                      s. paul   (March 2022)