The entire city
Saw him off,
If only
In his mind.
It was all
Hot air balloons,
Multi-colored
Ticker tape
Falling from the sky,
And golden gilded balconies
Filled to standing room only
With the elbowing elated.
The streets were lined with
Towering, blow up icons,
And money pinned by
Underweight pimps
To effigies of blown glass.
There were piles of books
And, of course,
Fire,
Always fire.
A hand turns this dial...
I wake
And she sleeps dying
Through her nose,
Hogging the bed
All the while.
Again and again
We find our ways
To hide
From everyone,
Camouflaged only
By wooden floorboards.
Rivers of our
Unborn children
Escape us
Each morning,
Trying so desperately
To reclaim lost time
And falling.
We are planted
Permanently here,
For now,
But will never admit
To this
Crime
Of
Roots and loam and water.
A raised cup for the
Dead,
Lost,
Forgotten,
If they remember to read
The sections of the map
That hold
The living
To nothing.
When I couldn’t sleep
My grandfather
Told me
Stories
With no point;
How, in the end,
The Mongols
Finally retreated
To die
With honor
Beside foreign wells
They would not
Drink from.
It was not the outline of her ear
But the words
She refused
To hear.
One day
Our father will call,
I promise.
He’ll tell us he is leaving,
So get dinner ready
For his empty chair.
I only handled a rifle once.
I was eleven, and
A prodigy of a thousand deaths
Already.
I pulled the trigger and
It blew up in my face;
I didn’t even get the chance
To destroy my perfect aim.
We as children laid
On mildewed mats
In firing position,
Waiting obediently
For the last signal
From God
Again and again.
No one ever
Had the courage
To sit
In the stool
We built from snow.
I can’t remember anymore
Who
Taught us
To uncork
The grenade
And then walk away.
No one talks about
The last century
Anymore,
We just buy the clothes,
And how many more
Innocent buildings
Must be lost
To satellite TV?
Eventually
They took him prisoner
For his own good
To protect the others
From the 8th
Again.
Without looking up
The guard told him
That union rules stipulated
He must change
His shit-stained
Clothes,
And that there were no
Shoes left
That could fit
Feet
So small.
We take pictures
To seal in boxes
And forget
Painlessly.
Through all of this:
All of these days,
All of these ages,
All of these channels,
All of these addictions:
We will still try to protect you
Because we couldn’t
Get it right
The first time.
If you haven't guessed yet
Tonight
I stared out at
The blinking,
Time echoed city
Of my birth,
And the sign
Above the skyline
Read:
You must change your life.
Bryn Mawr, PA – 10/6/06
