the cyclical nature of heroes and forerunners is a tangled web

folk lore idols become messy caricatures and ultimately cast aside in favor of more flattering new age inspirations

samuel clemens was the greatest story teller on the planet

friends with tesla and reknowned for his wit

born in the golden age of true americana folklore

tom sawyer and huck finn were regaled as two of the greatest works of a fledgling american literary voice

now they don’t read it in school because of the language

not many kids are going to pick it up and discover the world of the mighty mississippi

of jumping frogs and whitewashing fences

the purification of the past written by the hands of the victors

no singing songs of mother jones

children marching on washington is so passé

doesn’t fit the narrative of coal working eight year olds in this very land

replace them with disfigured refugees but put a pretty one up front

whitewashing means something different in the vernacular of shadowy overlords and fake news

the filth of the seventies and eighties became an anti-authoritarian movement of germophobes and pop up noodle shops

authenticity a forgotten sense of misguided notions of antiquities

the brave explorers that conquered a brave new world now written as dastardly villians that raped and enslaved

and the pain and heartache have somehow psionically whipped hundreds of years in the future

the nineties shined a light on the problems

the new millennium showed it was likely too little too late

as the cans of hair spray to achieve maximum bang height to tight rolled stone washed denim cocaine fuelled excess burned the ozone layer and built a plastic island in the ocean

a young dice man, cigarette dangling menacingly from his scowling mouth

pompadour greased and swirled like van gogh’s fetishist masturbatory dream sequence shot in stunning absinthe soaked nightmare diaramas

spewing homoerotic nursery rhymes while eschewing the fog of masculine musk that startles deer to action in a verdant field of disneyfied hipster beards and knit caps

richard pryor set himself on fire freebasing cocaine and john belushi died in a hotel room

and i just want to feel the lazy river sweep me to freedom where the waters meet the gulf

float away from here

make believe there was such thing as simpler times

born with a noose around our throats but unaware until we get older and it fits a little more snugly

swallowing grows difficult as old regrets get stuck and the itchy rope digs in a little tighter

drifting on the seas of misappropriated dreams