Torch (draft)

This hasn't been revised yet, but here is the working draft of my most recent poem.

Torch

Hindered revolutionary silence among the common lands
The lightning-sweet bite of air, the fiery passion
Cannisters of vapor, spider-silk, they are the dreams of men
Men who had long ceased their mournful perambulations
Wanderers who never had a home, levies without fire or water
The boundary between their souls and everyone else.

Oh sugary flame, how the single torch borne aloft
The glazing glare, how it consumes even the most insignificant
And they burst forth with acclamations of irrepressible joy
The stentorian tones of one drowning out the rest
Distorted, clanging, the acid in the well-spring
Meek and dead to the method, they do not question
A pinwheel of bright images, revolving round and round
Eternally spinning the flashing idols to the weary
With their bright speckled faces and yellow-parchment hearts
Blank and yielding to the slightest indentation, insensitive pressure,
Oh fruitless rage!  Oh pinwheel of poison! Oh sinful flame!

I've stepped forth into a world of demagogues and demigods
Of the knowledge of good and evil
Of the tattered and torn hearts and garments of the flood
When the levy breaks, who will carry you home?
When the tide of retribution has drowned the flame
Who will show you a world free from sin
When shards of bitterness and a frenzy of confusion
Have dragged the embers of doubt into the swaying poppies
Igniting the brushfire, leaving nothing but heart-rending silence

Yet there is joy in those green-valley eyes
In those endless swirling molecules that froth and foam
In the quelled quarrels of multitudinous sick hearts
For in those days, there never will be the acidic strokes
Or blinding carousels of misfortune and lies
Only the torch with its crisp-crackling flavor of peace.