June 28, 2012

poem 202 of a poem a day for 2012



ring out your dead America

I love skipping stones
skeletal keying my name inside
each ripple, nipple squeezing
the easy clever sleaze for laughter
drawing circled curtains of it
in the ways light finds a shine
outside the edge of a closed door
in arrested song and dance
make everyone forget
you can’t remember who you are
or might have been once
without the many faces of one long poem
another skip another dead piece of me
wants one more look at the clouds
one more reach one more note
in my odd jaunts and cellular thirst

I am bone-scribing my raw
and ready will to survive
in rides wave after wave
to crumbling lands of opportunity
I am a tendril spawn full of go
without a steering wheel passing gas station
after gas station selling electric messiahs
at the counter currency exchange for fate
or other mechanisms of empty soul
the law says this is why you’re here
this is why you feel naked without clutching nostalgia   

America what have you become
why do you let politics rob
the souls of good men and women
turning them into laser-ed hunger
with ancient rituals of algebra and prime numbers
meant for the telling of stories of worst case scenarios
as everyday occurrences candied and packaged neat
as a need to stop someone from taking something from you
so you tell me to go get a gun and shoot
every motherfucker who doesn’t understand pain
and isn’t worth the explanations we dress to the nines
on the evening news with its flash burn emotions
and the constancy of the word freedom
America you are becoming more and more, hollow
branding who you are becoming onto me as I am becoming you

I only remember how to spell the word freedom
I have never known what it means
never feeling its dream except during sex
though that could be just another ruse
or fuse lit to get inside you’re velvets
I am sure I would deny it if asked
but there is no cost met when a moment is filled with mean
so America behind your closed doors and filthy streets
your closed minds and filthy nails is this what you want to cask
and age like an Amontillado that will show everyone who asks
what color is the taste of you
when some distant species will have dug you up
to clinically document what you were
will you be just like all the animals
you have pushed onto a paper memory
waiting in line for a soul to steal into
and a body crawling the tides of midnight
knowing eventually a Dawn with no need for words
and the kind of chains your freedom bring
will rise and lift every bow to where
we might all skip stones and watch
the early morning mist lift the veils
with each wrist turn we sail another stone
listening, peering, nearing the vocabulary of
what a smile shared is again

EJR ©

1 comment:

  1. and yes I caught the typo...you folks who read these are magnificent...thank you ever so much...Edward

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