Surrender Poems

The first one was a blues assignment for Poetry inspired by One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Bred to fit the mould
This is how to exist
Bred to fit the mould
Comply if you want to exist
The system’s so successful and old
It’s pointless to resist

Nail sticks up gets pounded down
Rebel locked up in a cage
Nails everywhere pounded down
Mistakes kept in a cage
Don’t even bother to frown
You’ll be here for an age

Some of us could leave
If we weren’t afraid
So many of us could leave
But they keep us all afraid
Thrash, buck, and heave
All you like but watch your spirit fade

You can’t make them stop
They control you hand and foot
You’ll never make them stop
When they control you hand and foot
You can’t scream in the Shock Shop
When you’re choking on rust and soot

Magnets control us now we’re machines
Hooked up to the combine
We’re just a group of faulty machines
Reforming for the combine
Some of us locked up since our teens
The moment we stepped out of line

Open up my arm
And see the gears inside
Open up my other arm
And see the wires inside
They say they mean no harm
So I thought until I died

***

My mind’s ears dance with fevered violins
And any hope of concentration twists,
Snaps, splits apart, and scatters ‘cross the winds
To disappear into distraction’s mists.
It’s funny just how fragile order may
Become at what small provocation makes
Its presence known: one violent melody
In full my contemplation overtakes.
At times when we need clearest thinking most
The strangest images may circles trace
Within our skulls, which play unwilling hosts
To useless antics of this mental chase.
But since diversions such I cannot fight
I may as well enjoy the sound and light.