My Sunglasses

I’ve got all of Tucson trapped behind my sunglasses
I’ve framed mountain ranges in the frames of my Raybands
I’ve got reflections of saguaro’s stranding still in front of my eyes
I have sunny days taking refuge underneath my shades
I’ve domesticated the giant star that rides blues skies into walking the edge of my brow
I use black plastic as onyx shields
So Tucson, I see you.
There’s an art revolution beating at your horizon
I’ve seen it skirting around these wastelands
They tell us we’re wasting our time
Telling the roadrunner to run back home
When its nest was here since the beginning of time
Tucson.
I’ve seen folklorico and mariachi pay tribute to your origins on the hottest of days
I’ve seen in the shadows in underground art forms
Graffetti. There’s a protest in there somewhere.
I’ve even witnessed it in pen to paper
In lips to mics. In cafés in your desert nights for your desert nighttime audiences.
Tucson, your culture and artistic value shines too bright for others to see.
Your artistic worth shines too bright for others to broadcast
They tend to only record your overdoses and murders
Seems like our televised story tellers prefer to paint us in immoral reds
The only time they pay the south side attention is when the south side is aching
It doesn’t help that schools force you to choose business
Give you chance to study law all the while cut out your art programs
Fine art is required by universities but they don’t always expect you to get that far.
Tucson’s fine art is too fine and infinite to be recognized by those undeserving
Society wants to capture our southern brethren as outlaws not poets
We’re called the misfit of the desert. As if every spray can, paint stroke, choreographed twist,
Slam poem wasn’t something to take pride in.
I’m sorry they only pay your schools attention when ambulances are parked in your driveways
And administrators get caught in doing ***** deeds.
I see your talent wasted. Your talent shown.
To remind myself of your artistic significance, I’ve framed you
On walks home I photograph your murals.
Listen to the poets in the hallways.
Observe the dancers compose and the musicians choreograph
I’ve caught your reflection in my corneas’.
I’ve dilated my pupils thoughts behind my sunglasses.
Framed your mountain ranges in my frames.
Took cover in your shades.
Trained the artistic freedom and right to walk on my brow
Tucson
I see you.

A White girl figure with a blank face and
a dress cropped over her knees lays
smeared flatly onto a restroom door;
a black star encrusted shoe kicks open the
Door.
In comes a knocking the delusions
of grandeur that stay suspended in the
Fragrance of workaholic soccermoms.
In one of the bathroom stalls
swims a ****** rosemary, teenage midlife-crisis
Averted. Theses tests were ironically
positive for the genesis of an unborn
Icon. I might have just used the wrong definition of irony.
Moving on. A hand flushes
the remanents of immortality down a sparkling, smiling toilet.
Rolled poems become unscrolled
when writeen on the pampered virgins paper.
In the next stall,
there lives substance for the homeless man
in the deep, brown soil
Of the marsh. A trash can is hunched over the sink,
attempting to dispense it’s
Apathy for a commercial world.
He turns the corner and sees writeen on the wall in
legible, abstract graffetti; “Ugliness is shrouded
under layers of positive
contradictions.” The words are engraved
deep into the cracked out, white tile wall.
Socialist Olympic torches blaze before ash
crumbles into communists tendencies.
The water is clear but the benches
are polluted with foreigner sea ****,
and
beneath the jangled sands
lie the zombies stuffed deep in the black body bags.