Can You Tell Me Why

The downturn in enthusiasm is palpable,
my tinfoil hat dropped like a fly in bright blue October
and just like Peter Pan, I am now without a shadow.

He was a passionate flawed man,
lived in the bushes and threw zippos.
He was careful to always qualify his nouns.
He excelled in jingoistic verbiage
and sitting on his high horse lobbed
pronouncements down on the believing masses.

He practiced moral chemotherapy and stomped
around the planet like an angry tourist on crack,
looking for the source of faith
not the dogma of man.

I didn't fear the forest before we met.
I dreamed and pondered, heard crickets
not Freddy Kueger in the night.
I have shed Paltrow-esque tears
that dry ice into an asphalt river of shame.

How much does it matter anyway,
the liqueur store is north of any intersection
and the Grand Pooh-Bah of redemption
has found other fields to pollute with impunity.

Bobbie Kilzer Gogain
1/24/03