Mermaids

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