Tourism Board Blues

Tumbleweed!

Where there is no right side to the tracks

Where brides wear rags and beggars wear white

And they're all made up like clowns

It's a fucking freakshow, this town.

The streets here bleed

A steady flow of lowlives and sadsacks

And never a day goes by without a halfhearted fight

Or murder theft rape arson

And zho's going to stop them?

The judges are all drunk

And the sheriff's asleep, dreaming of a haven

Where there are no laws to break or uphold.

The ghosts of dead soldiers haunt the saloon

Drinking the milk of the moon.

There's a preacher-punk

Stands on a soapbox, says we'll all go to Heaven

Because there is a Heaven - at least that's what we're told -

"Where the angels leave tracks in the clouds and smoke:

Cigarettes don't kill you up there, folks!".

And the streets speak.

Word on the street is, there is a war on

That's being fought with harps and firehoses.

Word on the street is, they've got us by the balls

And they won't let go till the fat lady falls.

There's a circus freak

(Most people think he's a bit of a moron)

Who lives off nothing but sunshine and roses

In the evil dusk he dances and sings

Like a loose plastic bag or a mad English King.

Welcome O stranger to Tumbleweed!

Where dreamers come to die and the dead come to feed...

I wrote a first version of this poem over a year ago. THen a second, then a third. It has been a sonnet, a blank-verse freeform, a prose poem and a dramatic monologue. I think this is the final version.