Have you forgotten the painted tractor
that sits atop the hill
the rush of pushing through
rustling pampas
when the land you stood on was yours

Where the day was won
before one
and the sun was a horse with wings
when night
was where the monsters lived
before they moved in next door

How a fence presented
irresistible challenge
a mélange of invite and dare
so we climbed
to find our golden goose
and handled it with care

I come from the great unwashed
womb of the child
who didn't dare dream
from a scheme
where the last lights are embers
from ravaging concrete flames

I come from the house fire of
denatured childhood
abandoned architecture
indolence in adolescence and
wrestling with the will of the wind

I come from crawling smoke
lingering in doorways
lining streets paved with
pejorative and placation
where the insightful ask is
"wit are you lookin' it?"
and the answer is always
a wrong one

I come from malnourished minds
where the bytes outnumber
the starving they would feed
from where the drowned
still walk around
coveting concrete feet

I talk to the pines. I sit
under their boughs of perpetuity,
rest my head against a security of
surety I can't quite grasp.
I tell them I am lost, that the search
has been costly. I tell them
I am the red squirrel
who lost one too many nuts.
I tell them the axeman has no love
for the taxman, though both
have been cut loose. I tell them
nosotros fuimos hechos
para más que esto. I tell them
there are things I've done
that not even the clearest sky
could observe, that pride is the fall
of the haughty man
and what comes after isn't worth a mention. I tell them
Old Man Wibble may have been
a drunken fool but at least he knew
what he was doing. I tell them
my attention has leisurely slipped
into a dimension quite immeasurable.
They wave their boughs
like wings in the wind. I tell them
this song could never be wrong
for the music is our own.

There's the exit door
Handle-less