Satuday Poem: Etheridge

[framlingem]

One of the things that I tell people who say that they don't 'get' poetry is to try listening to song lyrics - they're often more accessible. It's also easier to find songs about a particular event, because the music industry is very much about what's happening in the now, especially when the songwriter in question is one whose music often displays social commentary.

And well, when else was I going to post this one? It isn't the most poetic of Melissa Etheridge's pieces (to my mind, that would be "I Will Never Be The Same"), but it is about an event which had an anniversary this week.



"Scarecrow"

Showers of your crimson blood
Seep into a nation calling up a flood
Of narrow minds who legislate
Thinly veiled intolerance
Bigotry and hate

But they tortured and burned you
They beat you and they tied you
They left you cold and breathing
For love they crucified you

I can't forget hard as I try
This silhouette against the sky

Scarecrow crying
Waiting to die wondering why
Scarecrow trying
Angels will hold carry your soul away

This was our brother
This was our son
This shepherd young and mild
This unassuming one
We all gasp this can't happen here
We're all much too civilized
Where can these monsters hide

But they are knocking on our front door
They're rocking in our cradles
They're preaching in our churches
And eating at our tables

I search my soul
My heart and in my mind
To try and find forgiveness
This is someone's child
With pain unreconciled
Filled up with father's hate
Mother's neglect
I can forgive But I will not forget

Scarecrow crying
Waiting to die wondering why
Scarecrow trying
Rising above all in the name of love

-M. Etheridge

Comments

[decken.livejournal.com]

What if you don't get poetry and you don't like song lyrics? : (

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

Then there's other art out there :p

[decken.livejournal.com]

This is true. An English professor once said that reading fiction was like watching TV in that you don't really have to do much, just be entertained and follow along with the story, but that poetry was more like a jigsaw puzzle because you can't just read through it, but you have to think about it and put stuff together.

Then she decided that analogy sucked, but it was the best she could come up with.

I was thinking, 'but I hate jigsaw puzzles'. ;D