Timothy Lawton

4/27/00

The smoke rises in white waves and streaks

Encompassed in a spherical cloud

Yet, I can hear the dead Indians laughing

Chuckling in their graves

Thinking

“They may have taken our land, raped our women, and killed us almost to the last.”

“But, we gave them cigarettes!”

Tobacco, the time-bomb that keeps on ticking

More effective than bullets

Longer lasting than radiation

It just keeps on killing, and killing, and killing

The perpetual motion machine of revenge

Maybe the Indians will have the last laugh after all

Or, should I say the last cough?

8/20/2000

Money
Have I fallen for you too?
Or is it that everything just seems to have a price
Shackle, chain, weight
Binding, holding, burdening
Industry is business ( bizeeness)
Work is a means of survival
Money
Money so I can eat
Money so I can move
Money so I can watch
Money so I can dress
Money so I can stay warm
Money so I can talk
Money so I can make money
Money
Have I fallen for you too?
Or, is it you just taint the air around me
Infesting our thoughts and polluting our actions
Industriousness is busy
And none of us have enough time to unwind
Or even slow down for one minute from Hyper- Maximum- Super- Overdrive
Money
Have I fallen for you too?

8/20/2000

I feel moved by the spirit, but don’t know where
Foolish confusion and ridiculous despair
Yet, I’m not fool enough to believe I’m fine
Or, that I can figure a way out
So, the easy answer is to say that you leave it up to God
The hard part is allowing that to happen
If I fail to question my faith is it lost?
If I fail to think all evil emanates from me, have I sinned?
I feel moved by the spirit, but I can’t discern the wind
Isolated in a crowd eyes whipping all about
Is it me or is it them?
I shouldn’t feel this way again and again

8/30/2000

Troubled plagued by the same old thing
Thought for another poem cause for another drink
The struggle is constant the pain unceasing
Like a condemned man who keeps believing
There’ll be a reprieve
How much greater is the frustration of other men
Who have not my mind and faith their wounds to tend?
For both my mind and faith have been thoroughly tested
Yet, my pain is strong and my endurance invested
Yes, this is the ink with which man scripts his travails
Cursing the sky and cursing his Creator with wretched wails
Where we truly fail

9/21/2000

What is a day and what is a life?
But time passed an experience had
How can one spend a moment?
In countless ways in countless waste
Or, in beautiful understanding
Choices
Choice is our dagger
Choice is our love
Sipping delirious imagination
Caught within the jaws of expectant machinations
Biting the hand that feeds us
Bleeding the blood that leads us
Sin
A moment spent away from God
A time of the past an experience had
How then can we fill our moments?
Human being in spiritual being
Going beyond the self accepting God’s help
Because a maze is best known by the hand that made it