Blood red skies and brown waters
Control your sons, control your daughters
Evrything Streaming with no one dreaming
Everyone outraged-every screaming
Global markets with xenophobic eyes
Risks assessed goals compromise
Doomsday clock runs off man-made time
Too busy to hear, to care, the final chime
(present skies are choked by wildfire smoke)
I’m in the land of postcard sunsets
The midwestern kind with corn and tractors
It’s a quieter place that slows you down
Where a traffic jam is six cars, not thirty
I’m in the land of lawn care and mowing
A wave to stranger is simply a neighbor
You haven’t met, only seen
Where they might know your business
But they’re not in it
I’m in the land of summer fairs and tractor pulls
And I had to use the internet to understand
It’s about engines and drag, obviously
I’m in the land of gas prices and food from the field
Where sports is politics and religion
And help is friendly and offered before differences
I’m in the land of seeing stars and less congestion
It’s made me pause, until now—
The city mouse is the country mouse, displaced
thereisnothingyoucandototurnbacktime
iteatsthesamemeals
andwishesithadneverbeenborn
butthoseregretsfallthroughthecracksintheskin
andallalongyouwatchedthinkingitallfamiliar
wewontlearn
nottoday
nottomorrow
orthedayafterthat
countyourselflucky
briefcandlesburnbright
this is nothing new
a dreary lament
the comeback-kid
gone so long
his voice alien
his clothes obscure
his signature laugh
a donkey bray
an echo with a long delay
Swivel chairs and neck chains
Sellers of cut-rate broken dreams
Auctioning dinosaurs and fodder
A slicer, an oven, retro booths
This Eldorado, that Babel
One cigar-mouthed phone call away
Balance of power
Still wealthy weighted
Freedom of speech
Unmedicated tirades
Resolute men bracing
Against dire winds
Women children barren
Over-exposed adolesence
Equality to love
Bravely smothered
Integrated team skins
Losing streak perpetual
We speak our peace
But too softly
Die of natural causes
With no remorse or fury
Out of the ashcans and tenderloins
Beyond obese, wandering buses
Past erratic, post-cultural taxicabs
Fields of concrete: Scarecrow’s home
Selling water, still wet from ice prison
Selling nickel bags for dime profits
Between red lights before dusk falls
The night brings fireworks
And hedge sleeping
And songs played too loud, too long
And whispers of what could have been
I ate the last of the Triscuits
And deftly recycled the box
I can’t undo what is done
The attention cements facts
Like Colombine, now Charleston
The mournings remain fresh
it’s just a little reassurance
gentle days fading into night
sunsets and moonlight, paint palettes
always open, no narration
what is seen is grasped
a sphere for hope
an omen provider
in reverse: a pin-hole exposure
A Vermeer distortion
Of all that is
Of all that will be
The folly of whimsy 