Refugees
Bandits running
Remote country,
One day short
Of a room,
Exporting
a truckload
Of expectations
And pre-fabrication.
*
We are the heathen.
Agents of
the Axis
Of Evil
*
until proven
innocent
*
Light is leaking
A little out of each
And every fall day.
The sheltered share
Nothing, not even to rent,
And our belongings,
Or sense of our stuff,
Stretched in piles,
Like cairns to give us
Direction over
The plain.
*
*
Our hands are cold
And our tires hot,
Numb to the labor
Of the road.
The trees are gray
And the ground
is blood damp…
*
Every day
A little hope occurs,
Another button pops
Out of our tattered coats
And runs away
To a better place
Beneath a hotel room deb.
*
We burn ephemera,
Mortar memories,
In the fireplace
with a haphazard
Bundle of stolen logs,
A threadbare furnace
Burning hot and hungry
For some bastard
To cut us a break.
*
If all this roaming
Made sense
We would be laughing.
Long icicles
Suspended above
The solemn creek,
Wise to the leaves
Turned to red, fallen
To the fetid bottom
Of the shady places.
*
If all this roaming
Makes sense,
We will notice the sound
Of an indivisible flock of birds,
Making love, hurrying then
To our day, a regular day,
In sensible pleasure
And finally,
A limit to our pain.
~ Amherst, N.H.
0from the book,
"Ipswich at War,"
Portrait of a Suburban Legend as a Young Man
*
Street skates ply the highway
leading to the lost children
They line up in court
after scarring their arms
with bursts of blue blood
and butane
*
Skateboard dude. Holy ranger.
Stiff shouldered, with close-cropped hair,
lanky as a sorrowful willow,
standing at attention,
sulking in regret, hand-bound,
the silent rebuke.
*
Stiff shouldered, snearing wise,
the great white defendant,
in nasal tremors, flares,
stares, surrenders the deed,
the vice, the miscue.
*
The lawyer shouts, in xenophobic
redoubt: Tall soliders, unite!
Vivi livi o muertes!
O, Lost children of sight!
*
But the judge hands over their
car keys, then, pleases them
with their rights.
*
What is truth, O judge
What is truth? They challenged
him, this Romeo, this stalker
with a guitar, strumming
on the sidewalk, who slept
in the desperation of this city's
plastic grace, this suburban
meatlocker of convenvience
and shame, where they
pop cold pills like candy,
then get suckerpunched
by gun-toting dads
in their SUVs, and O yes,
the cops, old Cyclops,
watching these streets,
the machine eye
loading this motherlode
of video games and hormones
and fear onto the conveyer belt
of justice, O yes, your justice, sure.
*
They hand over their rights,
compliant souls, one by one
They hand over their rights.
*
Compliant souls. One by one.
*
They take the deal
then spin roller wheels
down the photo radar lane
lusting and loitering,
lingering, in love.
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