The Mohican

The Mohican knew well that his end had drawn near,
as he notched empty hours counting pitchers of beer
swirls of dull respite, awash in the world
bleary-eyed bliss with a headache's reward

The Mohican foreshadowed the world's bitter end
when brothers-in-arms don't arrive in the end.
He'd rehearsed it before, life's grim cul de sac,
that sense in the gut of a surprise attack
the knives in the back, the empty-eyed smiles
the white mans' possessions that stretch on for miles.

Mohicans were stalked by what others can't see.
they could measure a man by the weight of his tears
--by the depth of his sorrow, the grip of his fear.
Once summoned, these ghosts would leap into the clear.
Like hunters rewarded with oncoming deer,
all sin worth its salt, called to task, must appear.

Weaker men shrink when they're opened up wide.
When their entrails, their souls, have nowhere to hide.
That's why the Mohicans were hunted like dogs
to tear down their mirrors held up by the gods.

He remanded the dregs of his last bitter days
to a broken-down bar in a dull whiskey haze.
Thirsty for silence, he drank himself blind
in a bid to extinguish the scenes in his mind.
He called himself Ishmael, seer of death
coaxing the Reaper with booze on his breath

To the drunken frat boys --hail Injun, well met!
who approached this sad figure, making good on a bet,
he'd rail like a prophet, but more to himself
and the dust-covered bottles that leered from the shelf:

"When I take my last fall from this back-corner stool,
I relinquish this world to its tricksters and fools.
When the Great One falls silent, once and for all,
this world I bequeath to its own lonely fall.

Not hearing me son was not your first sin.
Not hearing yourself, that's what did us all in."

Copyright 2008, Norman Ball (less info)