Oh Captain, My Captain! the poet once said
as he illuminated lincoln not collapsed in his bed
but standing wounded bravely below the mast
eyes greyed forward in dream of death and deaths
of bloody masses killing masses
commanding respect and men until the last.
Ignite a fire and let the heavens lower down
a ladder to admit the newest jewelled crown
adorning all of empty space as we left mourning
gather to her funeral pyre adoring.
So many words were said but even more left
as a confounding silence swept
from the mouths of all their speech
following the words of the poet old
whose timeless reach condescends to speak
for the martyrs of a generation yet untold.
An ode to a fallen woman, who lived to fill a seat
which propped her body's tenaces
but could not support her frailty
as age behind which death menaces
took from her the dignity
of choosing her own destiny
and left her quarrelling progeny
to bitterly divide her estate
before her body lost its heat.
We will bury with Caesar his faults
and likewise we will sing
an ode to a fallen woman.
We will bury deep within the vaults
of our heart and mind the memory which
says nothing unkind of the dead or that
legacy which they leave behind.
Elevated to the highest Court of a powerful land
Elevated in her mind that she could understand
where to draw the line or not
in the broadest beaches of ethical sand.
Judging values instead of laws
never having to suffer an election
for dictating to us her philosophical predilection.
Cruelly arrogant in her voluminous blasting
but remembered as a light for women everlasting.
But what rights do we have if they can created and invented
today but tomorrow be ended
by the whim of her opposite, but her equal in method?
But she lives on in our history as nothing but blessed.
There would never be better jurists
since our country's creation than those that sit
in the highest court of our nation where we presumed
legal questions are presented for deliberation.
But instead we find in this august tribunal of nine
the questions debated far more sublime.
Parsing the lines on the beginning of life
with no further discussion, only strife.
With no further knowledge than a jurisprudence degree,
this woman dictates to you and me.
Her mouth shriveling like tasting a lemon,
"Why should you vote when the issues appear
to me and four others perfectly clear?
Ignoring the people, half of them women.
Idolize a partisan who lived to please the mob,
I'd be happy if she'd just done her job.
It takes a lawyer to judge, a professor to lecture
but neither calls for a two faced imposture.
It takes a con man to con, whether this applies to
women or not, I'm glad she's gone.
But I will sing an ode to a fallen woman,
her dignified and corpulent limbs still
alive and outstretched towards the rising sun.
And in the patriotic colors of her garb dyed
over cotton drab we find among the bloody stabs
the mark of a dagger unsheathed
against her by one
who's coffin now lies in state, wreathed.
