In Selma

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Papermill skunksmoke envelopes this town that time

Has only barely just remembered

has just taken the time to carve the cracks into the faces of the millworkers who labor

along the banks of the black river

where old bullets still kill Yankee soldiers buried in watery graves

who still eternal Rise.

and in the year when God or god or Jehoover forgot this place

and the water flowed through the streets,

A thousand cotton plantations mausoleums for the ghost who Refuse to Die.

and who only sire the sons of mock aristocracy

who learn their are Three Things in this Life,

                1.) Money.

                2) Pleasure.

                 3) Darkness.

So that a man will struggle his whole life for the first one (money)

with which to purchase just a little of the other two (pleasure. darkness.)

So that they grow old and toothless inside deerstands or Budweiser bars,

so that a bewildered Traveler may ask, "Why Selma? Why do they live there?"

                  Or even, "Why do they live at all?"

Only to inhale with each protoplasmic breath "Remember when?"

and only to exhale "By god, we done it!"

So that the man becomes a no-man, a nothing, and shrinks as a ghost back into the ghosthood that is Selma, Lord Selma.

and somewhere a second rate Immortal balls his fist and curses "This is not my fault!"

Pleads, "Ain't none of this my fault..."