Armistice

We aren’t afraid of a fast barreling train
Of steel and steam coming down the line
Yet fear the fear of things make believe
Like the “or else…” if you decline to ride

The railroad gauge is a shoulders length apart
Just ask all the dead and Chinese immigrants
Their ballasts of fleshy canvas tanned dreams
Stretched into a harness and bitter leather bit

An arranged treatise between the plowshare
The farmer and the whinnying horse between
The art of the deal signed amidst circling lions
Whipped to terms and brokered by ye cat o’ nines

It’s an absurd comic skit straight from vaudeville
Culminating in a black and white Christmas scene
The villain with the 500 dollar tie, the carrot stick
The damsel, the distress, and hero fashionably late

Most things are done way too much like working
And the way old people’s faces grow into frowns
Versus things that aren’t done enough like hugs
And the way a sprout knows only to reach for sun

I can tell when somebody never worked a long day
They avert my gaze like I’m Medusa giving them head
They stand frozen like a stone statue or paper weight
In offices with degrees and pictures of fish once caught

Proud proof over storm, claw, PDD, divorce and college
Sweet victory Perseus! You reeled in the mighty Cetus!
From backs of beast, yacht and lines off hookers cracks
Come ye magpies feast upon entrails off laborers’ backs

Jobs are just a nervous glance, and a .357 under the desk
And the wafting smoke snaking out from bosses’ mouths
Memorialize this armistice between slave and charioteer
The rich few riding and the millions broken and run down