Funk (#49 song)
An eye from the Creator,
a fire, bright, setting slowly
over the cusp of the “new world,”
kissing the Old World, softly
to sleep, it is the kissing that is soft,
not the sleeping.
Under the light of that unwanted dawn there is
a warrior still left standing, we
war-journey them
to the battle and back,
to the battle and back,
to the battle and back,
radiance, felt through the
water that flows blue but runs red,
around and around
that quickly setting sun,
around and around
a circle, there are
songs for the way our warriors
used to honorably drift away
We used to die in battle
but today they ring out
— “whatchu tryna tell me?”
while we slosh a bottle around,
we laugh about how we are singing
Songs from the wrong eagles,
our war journey is through the hills
with the windows down
In a red ford with
the tribal tag torn
and a car battery in the front seat
We are nurtured,
Remembered,
by the birds who fly
around and around
while we hit our hands
on the hoods of clunkers
and when it stops being sacred,
We laugh,
We funk #49,
here we live,
here we are live.
We laugh,
my warrior, we aren’t
the warriors, of anything
like that, anymore.
Copyright © 2025 by Lily Painter. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 6, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.