my sunny days were spent
cooking plastic spaghetti noodles over
a wrinkled sticker depicting an oven eye
while kate shuffled through invisible mail
and tended to our adopted stuffed animals
imitating her mother’s affection.

my sunny days were spent
building lego castles on the cool screen-in porch
while the radio played mellow weezer
that was suddenly replaced by sparks
and foul smoke because of billy’s antics
with the hissing water hose.

my sunny days were spent
drawing tattered pirate maps on jelly-smudged
napkins that guided us—the brave hardened
rapscallions—to the attic to horde stores of
gold and to battle foes in the dusty shadows
with our swords made of cardboard.

my sunny days were spent
hiding and seeking until mom’s heels
clicked up the hot asphalt driveway where
she would chastise me for the mess i had made
of myself in cuts scrapes and grass stains
worn by me as medals of honor.

If I summed you up
I’d abstain from strained
refrain, from those mushy
lines that read like a hike
through a swamp. An inkwell
tipped, they pour from trite
lips and taint a masterpiece.
But you were not made
to bathe in black cliché;
you: the product of Someone’s
fantastic oration; spoken to life,
left in my sight. And I, but the
by-chance observer, who only
knows what not to say.

The view from my window
is static as stone. Four
high rises mechanically probe the
grey skyline, their scale-like, cemented  
girth obscuring the world within
eyeshot. Sickly city trees weep
and mourn, but cannot be
heard through double paned glass
and eggshell white prison walls,
which house by solitary confinement.

Lives are lived hermetically sealed.
Humans reside in spaces better
suited for use as fishbowls.
                                                                ­                                                                     Who longs for the ocean?
We hide away, smothering
our vibrant-hued colors we
once let each other see.
                                                            ­                                                               Go and make rainbows, please.

If you were to ask me, i'd
Laugh it off, saying
Of course i do, sweetie. why
Verify? three words
Each day suffice, so
You know, right?                 no, wrong.
Only, ever, always: you.
Uncontrollably, hopelessly, totally, i do.

What would the elders think about their home?
Stone edifices claw the earth they’d known.
These mortar-crusted bellies are sustained
By humans living lost and self-contained.
My jaundiced leaves cry out against the wind
Yet my unheard laments instill chagrin.
The soil beneath, an arid, grimy bed,
The air surrounding, acrid fumes instead.

O, Mother, we forsaken sons desire
A Nat’ral renaissance You may inspire!
Reverse the spell upon the human mass,
And set them free from terra cotta caste.
Reveal Your pow’r; rock the very ground
The buildings claim as theirs and let resound
Their crumbling corpses shattered by your might,
And pleasing may it be within Your sight.

My prayer concludes, but still, the hellish ‘scape
encroaches with the goal of global ****.
And ‘til great Eden’s comeback I do see,
I’m powerless: a sickly city tree.