Poem: Tower of Babel

Poem: Tower of Babel

Tim Mills

Tower of babel wall mural, photo by Michael Cosgrove on Digital Journal.
 
 
 

Tower of Babel

 
 
We condemned as agitators aggregators Martian rabble
won’t cower to ascend the Tower of Babel so cursed
we’ll no longer pretend that righteous thirst
is quenched from the gentry’s deepest well
n we of like muscular minds that show n tell
can know the end of Nimrod’s edifice of Hell.
 
 
When the Tower of Babel stands lonely n undone
n emptied full to the fiery brim of faithless costly overrun
we’ll celebrate the prophesy of revolution’s rising sun
n sharpen up our dullest wits ‘cause reconstruction’s just begun.

 
 
We shaven left faceless by overlords demanding we grovel n shovel
a knave’s new world – this tower – a godless hovel
shall answer as stalwarts comfort a mother in sorrow
for universal analgesic promise of tomorrow
that our gospel be stoked n David’s stones be hurled.
 
 
When the Tower of Babel stands lonely n undone
n emptied full to the fiery brim of faithless costly overrun
we’ll celebrate the prophesy of revolution’s rising sun
n sharpen up our dullest wits ‘cause reconstruction’s just begun.

 
 
We turtle-shelled welded into one against Nimrod’s heinous piston
remain foursquare against his penthouse – a septic social system
where the sedentary segregated tax-abated voluminous may dwell
while yesteryear encased in high rise cinder blocks we stockaded
would feast upon each other like raging cancer cells.
 
 
When the Tower of Babel stands lonely n undone
n emptied full to the fiery brim of faithless costly overrun
we’ll celebrate the prophesy of revolution’s rising sun
n sharpen up our dullest wits ‘cause reconstruction’s just begun.

 
 
Our fathers did hardy labor for Nimrod’s shirkers who commanded
yet still we got lassoed at the rodeo by berserkers whip-handed
so we reborn reupholstered pounders pray deliverance be won
while we shoulder-holstered strikers say we’re bound for histrionic fun
let Nimrod’s brain be stunned let his shirkers be shunned
n his berserkers belly dance or just haul-ass run.
 
 
When the Tower of Babel stands lonely n undone
n emptied full to the fiery brim of faithless costly overrun
we’ll celebrate the prophesy of revolution’s rising sun
n sharpen up our dullest wits ‘cause reconstruction’s just begun.

 
 
We star-spangled banner-waved wage-enslaved have long pursued percolated
n boot-scoot-boogie’d a secular rave so wrangling rude yet liberated
from bifurcated barnacles of disunited fifty-stated bureaucrazy corpora-a-a-ted
that we’ll christen this tower the fixer-upper no top no bottom we share the supper
no gentry we rent free but bring along your hammer
no shirkers or beserkers this ain’t the slammer.
 
 
When the Tower of Babel stands lonely n undone
n emptied full to the fiery brim of faithless costly overrun
we’ll celebrate the prophesy of revolution’s rising sun
n sharpen up our dullest wits ‘cause reconstruction’s just begun.
[2014]

 
 
 
 
Tim Mills is a labor educator/activist and began this life as a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam War. He is a long-time union member and has served as an elected official, but claims to be proudest of his work on union newsletters. Mills writes guest columns appearing in the Rockford Register Star and other publications located in northern Illinois where he resides. Although Mills acknowledges that his politics are leftist, he believes that as radicals we must start with the world as it is, not as we’d wish it to be.

Share This

Leave a Reply