We Don't Like to Think

Tidy little squares of ham stuck in plastic
Curlicues of turkey all squiggled in rows
Patties of burgers stacked neatly in freezers
We wolf all these down in one week of our frenzy
We don’t like to think of the world behind Wal-Mart, it seems

“It’s a horror!” “It’s appalling!”
Shoosh! It doesn’t belong
Better to savor the world we created
Because we know we are superior
Within our minds and our walls

Satiating our palates and sluicing our pennies
We cover all needs in one romp through the store
We don’t like to think about it at all
We don’t like to think
Better leave it alone….

But the machines go on slicing
And dicing the rest
And their lives are spent looking at steel blades coming down
In cages just big enough to move the key limbs
We don’t like to think about it at all

Move in another pallet
Appease another palate
And fire up that grill
We don’t like to think
We don’t like to think

We don’t like to think about it at all

We don’t like to think beyond the Wall

A Trophy

The boy was presented
For Christmas a paper
His father’s picture
A long black box
And then a shiny heart
Background of peculiar royal hue

Hangs from a trophy

Hands and feet
Later appeared pictured in odd places
His mind hangs on a trophy
Little league champion
Soon a rifle will be
In those hands where the bat is

Beautiful Exception

Be the exception to my rule
Make me feel like less a fool
See I’ve been going to all this school
And learning
The wrong things

I see you span your wings
I hear the way you sing
You make me forget everything
Beautiful exception
To the rule

With every object falling down
Like the moon, you stay up proud
Breathing with no oxygen around
Beautiful exception
To the rule

And when the stars have all worn out
You will shine there without doubt
The light the world can’t do without
Beautiful exception
To the rule

For Ken

So often I wonder how
The Judge arrives at these decisions
He is more a surgeon:
Incision in the bloodline
Took you away too soon
You so blessed with grace
You so bound for glory
You so missed by the world
Because you gave so much too it
You are dancing on the clouds
Painted happy like the man in the moon
Laughing at these questions
Singing a new song
Meeting new judges and new angels
Or resting, now, perhaps

Lincoln, April 16th

Hold me like rain
On the wound of the nation
The salve that binds colors and classes and thieves

Hold me like smoke
Where the fire has seared you
Gunpowder and gristle become grasses and seed

Hold me like hope
On the lips of the children
Whose fathers and uncles are corpses and wreaths

Hold no more hostage
Ascending toward freedom
Angels descending hold garlands and peace

Review

I looked back on my life from the clouds
Wondering where it began
Was it in the eyes of my father
Coming home from the war
Or my mother’s petulant murmurings
One more makes four
One more makes four
Born of the shrapnel and radar and blood
Born of the soft, sad lament
Born at a time when the world was at rest
Gearing up for its next bloodbath
I was bathed in the milk of a vagabond sheep
I was lost in the continents’ drift
I sleep now in silence as these clouds turn to rain
Sweat of the years bound to fall

Child

You’re a child
Santa will come
The Tooth Fairy, too
The world is a rainbow
Dream wild
As colors fill you

Animals talk
Costumes parade
Your head is in pictures
The pictures you’ve made
No one to tell you
There is no such blue

You’re a child
The dream will expire
And so will your fire
But you won’t be a child
By then