We watched a generation laze around
on sun bleached lawns
like in the portraits of saints, shadowed orbs
wrapped some of the heads, bent olive
and thorns stuck to skin, that
tunnel down to relive a time when they
thought they saw grace--
If all our lives
were a crawl through hot desert sand, some
would have to give in to bitterness
or hide under the pain, spend the pain
bleed free of the pain, learning ways
to vomit it out with dust, in an
adrenaline rich haze, you'd see it as it
exited through a shroud of talk
Instead we are windows, rows of eyes
Monasteries of bone, tied
Once or twice to a soothing rumble
Heard from a train a block away, crosslegged
On the floor in stages of non rest
That took us to our first unpolluted breath
Neighborhoods crumble
through plate glass and the ex- chruched
sell out a few dreams to some
green waving flags
ANY COLOR USA
Your ankle stays,
Chained to the skinny leg of a metal
Folding chair, you can pick it up
And take it with you everywhere or drag it
Behind you in modes of constant noise
To get the salvation found
In the jelly center of shortbread cookie
Its a cemetery circle
Of the same cult mistakes, where seven years of
Suicide and internal animal screams woke, then
Picked the scalp like an old scab
Getting to the center of frozen flesh, that went
through the spirit like a discarded suitcase
kept packed so its always ready to run
Because her tentacles moisten there
in the penetrating rain
as the cool blue bubbles up
and around in the sinking of the slide
found in the lushness of all that under green
that gives life and takes it back
