The Song of Justice Dennert

The Song of Justice Dennert

by RJHoffman

Her: What keeps you scraping along?
Me: What keeps you being so happy?
To myself: I can see by your smile
I’ve had enough of you.

You take my money and tell me
you know hat it’s like to be alone,
you’ve been where I’ve been. I just
have to faith and try a little harder.

But the story you didn’t give to me
while you were mapping out my destiny
was the money to buy the apartment I rent
came from someone else’s tragedy

I’m sure your husband, too, would’ve loved
to hear himself preaching to me,
a crooked man of fifty three,
but I owed him no more than I do to you,
and this is what you make me sing:

I don’t give a shit
about your judgment and spite.
As long as you have a dog to kick
everything will always be right,
heaven for you is just a better THIS,
but I’ll hold the candle closer, bitch
heaven’s a homeless pit

I have to tell you the truth,
I’ve got no thought of you,
no more than to
a pile of worn out shoes,
as for your faith,
if I were you I would need it too.
Where you are going
those whom you’ve kept behind
will no longer be behind you

 

Part of the Chandala project, which is a series of short stories and poems that is loosely configured after the model of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, Jean Toomer’s Cane, and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. It deals with existential themes of the lower classes.