SNAP
Goes the can of beans,
The soda-can-dreams
That fizz and hiss
On their way to oblivion.
America is the land
That without irony
Sells both the cigarette
And the nicotine patch.
It was late and the insomniac moon
Played cold music in my ears,
A seashell hum foot-tapping
To the beat of toss-turning dreams.
The night hangs low and shatters treetops
Like a brain bludgeoned against a wall,
Bone obliterated, thought incinerated,
Oozing toward the denuded earth,
And I resist.
Sleepless, restless, hopeless—yes.
Still I resist.
In Vietnam we set the jungle on fire,
The leaves and branches melting like wax,
Candles blown out by blind war
Snuffing out the celebration of life.
I am not a patriot.
I kneel when called to stand
And rise when told to sit still.
I have no respect for flags
And those who wave them.
I saw the rose bloom in thorns, her petals pierced
And bloody, her scent metallic, her countenance,
Once sanguine, sanguine no more, but pained,
Burned by the sun, depressed by the darkness
That since that horrid November had blotted
Out the moon until even the owls ceased to hoot.
When children by gunfire die,
When the dreamer and the warden clash,
When statues betray the sculptor, we proclaim
This is not who we are.
I write from bed today:
Charlottesville bleeds, bloody hands
That keep hope at bay
With a smoldering gun and smoldering sands
That pierce the breast and burn the feet
Of those who from injustice ne’er retreat.
And yet, is a kiss that different from a hug,
from a poem, from a text? Neither nature nor science
has anything to say on the matter. Love follows no rules
save those set by her practitioners.