purging the airwaves

they told it to stop its preaching, that microphone made of ore.

if it wouldn’t refrain from rebuffing, it was straight to the furnace they swore.

it responded in kind with its ire, and reminded that they also sermoned.

“Every day”, the mike would say, “they were selling more whale oil than Herman.”

some thought about it — this accusation, they pondered all that it meant to advise.

and slowly they realized the truth in it, that each was a sage in his eyes.

but many did not buy this line from the speaker.

so they would not recant their promise.

these were the sort who could not be less meeker,

and demanded more proofs than poor Thomas.

So after they’d crammed up their ears with hot wax,

and after they’d horse-tied their peepers,

they’d decided the transmitter was a fit for train tracks,

and they carried it there in their sweepers.

But e’en as they went, with the justice in their pockets,

E’en as they went with their false peace,

it wasn’t too long that the skies filled with rockets

as what handcuffed the chaos went released.

For that mike in its simple steel, with its cracks for vibrato, it took quite a heat to full melt it.

And long b’fore it quickened to lead in that grotto, the vineyarders of earth sort of felt it.

Like a chunk of the soul, sledged from heart, into water,

they beheld their own light sail down river

and inside where their chest was a mess, things got tauter,

and they sensed as if twained from Life’s Giver