America the Brave.
One-way ticket to DC.
Cigarettes. Coffee. Tylenol.

Cousin of a land untouched
by seed, by root, by child, by brush.
Timber aged, filigreed by wire;
I wonder, death: does it inspire?
You: a monolith, sentinel no more;
metal your limb, lightning their pour.
The touch of sap is gone from you,
refashioned for cold and copper dew.

Mycelium grief, fire-baked sorrow;
I bid adieu, tomorrow-
-tomorrow.

I do not make it easy,
I do not make it kind.
I do not travel breezy,
nor sing of earth and rhyme.

My words are thunderborn,
hatred, war, and pain;
politics for one and all,
social grief and game.

Entertainment's worth,
the value I extract;
a tale for twenty thus,
a tale for us and that:

Memories yet traveled,
roads not trod by us;
the voice of yet born trillions,
the journey that is love.

Your broken breath, half a sob - regret coiled, skin fevered.

Swallow
               it
                  down,
or don't

think on it:
Shame.

A most beautiful gift-
-to rise above.
-to rally against.
-to learn from.

This-
-a subject in need of dire discussion:

It has been argued the People are ever the aggressor;
unwieldy, illogical children.

Rioting without cause;
martyrs to treason.

A lie-
-the Lie.

Police brutality, senatorial banality,
the sting of verbalized hatred?

These too are political;
a violence driven by reigning powers:

Microcostic displays of decay,
condoned and arrayed:

Neat lines, neat numbers;
statistics, not People.

In the end, faced with such imposition-
-that a fist is made:

The cornered rat bites;
fights to survive, no matter the cost.

Aye,
cruelty.

We are as Athens and Athena,
mortal and divine,
entwined/inspiration:
libations made for love's drugged mind.

Romance is no thing of flame or wax;
it is the spark and starter,
and sometimes falls splat.

You need for fuel for endurance,
patience for warmth;
understanding of limits, and humour for more.

There is worth in choice, in holding firm,
in bending to whims,
in affection deserved.

By grace of Man,
by imagined God,
love is this and more unsought.