I found ribbons where others found nothing
Peacock feathers lying on the ground
I know the name of your father, I know your name
The soul of you inside my own soul
As we passed each other in the final round

What country is this?
Not mine,
What kind of people allow its people…
What kind of bigotry promotes this
What color is blood?

Your gun is shiny and sticks out of your pants,
It rubs against your *****
and fits perfectly In your hands
The sweat in your palm
Is made of gunpowder and ***.

Jizzle juice monsters
Preying on our streets,
Spraying your ball-bearings
over baby carriages
between the eyes of grandmothers
silencing the singers who only want
to sing.

Can’t you all go somewhere?
Meet somewhere in a desert where
Your bandanas can fly
High on poles of braided bones
With skull dust and snake bile
and maps meant to lead you to
the utopia of your sick wet dreams

There,  Jizzle man, you can have it all
Blow up your rivals and your friends
Bleed yourselves into the rhapsody
of bullet holes and death.
And then
let the rest of us
move on.

When I was 15, I remember buying singles like
The Lion Sleeps Tonight,  Louie, Louie,  Wild Thing,
I Got You Under My Skin…
I remember buying 45 RMP plastic speed adapters for pennies-
pressing them into the center of the records
hearing them click in place.

They were a part of my youth,
little plastic things that popped out of the pockets of my jeans
whenever my mom did the wash,

invaluable, necessary, plastic discs that appeared everywhere -
inside my jewelry box, on top of my dresser,
even in bottom of my black & white, catholic saddle-shoes…

incredible, magically, musically endowed, little middle plastic things,
like guitar-picks,

strumming radiant sounds in a back-yard universe
across the beams of a basement winter's homily
inside the space-lined ears of a bleached blond teenager

whose heart & soul
were permanently scorched.

Just as the goodness gets caught in the closure
The doves are driven from the sky
Blackness bores down on the heated stems
of the dandelions
the lions leap once before they die

I thought of you on that river
Your faded flannel shirt tied to your waist
A broken oar in your left hand
As you paddled lopsided to the dock

I knelt down to meet you
brushed the salt stains from your face
caught the smell of ****** on blistered lips
inhaled the kiss off you –
then let it go

will you be there when the waters meet
when the last sparrow circles west
and all the skulls of all the kings
have bullet-holes as they’re laid to rest

You knew the season, the changing wind
The way the storm clouds hovered low,
You sensed the ending, the deluge coming
the river unrelenting,
swirling round your small wooden boat,
your ******-clear eyes

and broken oar.

…For Now
the people I know are talking taxes, the price of heat, ******* food!

The people he serves
wipe their spoons on silk napkins, slap each others’ shoulders
take each others’ wineskins, corkscrews in their eyeballs,
walL sT. on their grins

The people I know get up in the morning, every morning,
everyday (in every possible way) to get to work,  
work all day, then come home tired,  a bit more afraid

The people he serves are out of his league
truly rich men with swash-buckle needs
avarice men with bundles of greed
to lay upon the stooges who desecrate the dream
who pick up the court jester and let him play lead…

we fund them both – the rich man and the clown
dress them up in emperor clothes, bow down
to their blows, we take it all and plead for parity,
wipe their smell from blistered hands
cuddle in cameraless work-cells
with a smartphone or a podcast jam

The people I know talk about the government
the inequality, the lopsided way it’s rigged,
the unfairness in squeezing every dime
tell each other things like – ‘chin-up’ ‘don’t give up’
‘nothing we can do about it anyway’

The people I know,
talk