Soapbox

Set the box on the corner

Stand up, a global amphitheater

A podium, a church, a strip bar

The communists and optimists and misogynists congregate

We get together and conjugate

We promote hope and spread the hate

Striving, struggling, talking to no one in particular

Just trying to convince myself that I can change this

Not just myself

I'm wrong

Dead wrong

Dead as a mouse in a trap

Crushed, neck snapped

I can't pull myself up by my laces

No matter if they're my Chucks or my boots

It won't work

And you can't help

Best you can do is want this pill bug roll around in a space vast and great

The harder I try, the more I solidify

Cramping into my shell

My fellow bugs tell me to look up

At the sky, the sun, the birds

The predators and the prey

The April rains the buds of May

The ants and termites tell me how I can be a man

Scream out in my little bug voice

Recognize what I am

Then I can be something else

Once I die

Once I die

Once I die

Then I rise

As long as I direct my words in the correct direction

God, pick up my boot straps

Give me new shoes

Some that were meant for walking

The kind that bring good news

Not the kind that wander into dens and pits and pens

Not the ones that track in trash and muck

I'm stepping down

Off the box

And following someone else