9.24.2014

CHAOS IN THE STREETS

What savage beasts humans can be, become,
    a relentless swell of fire-breathing
on streets where blood spills, ebbs, flows, electricity
    of every atom, of every beating vibrating
body, angered, hungered, as bullets
    with anyone’s name upon them
dance with the salivating lips of the kiss of death
    blazing angrily through tense air
where tears flow from tear-gas, transmitted,
    polars shifted. Where are the Patriots & Protesters
in Chicago? where are they to cry outward
    into the Illinois sky where murder
after murder reigns supreme? where are the
    curb-stompers & wide-mouthed screamers
stirred like hellacious hives, where are the
    spiders in the webs around the Media’s
blackout? Self-portraits in a National Guard’s
    eyes!—red red red—dead
to what? Every inhale is a balloon that lifts
    to capture one’s attention, but turns away
dully as one feels it stubbornly shift in a direction
    that is less appealing. The darts of an exhale
is the pop! The Global Economy bursts out
    like a zephyric ironclad rain, steel walls
of re-imagined Berlin-like barriers, a curtain
    like machinations scalping the globe
perhaps the universe as chemtrails spitfire
    as if a kind of Wormwood of nuclear fallout
became our halos—the glass of it breaking in
    a stagnant light, poignant, like sharks on a pier
pulled up by fishermen, escape back into the ocean
    where ships go silent into the underworld
of the shifting liquids where mermaids are maids
    of tempests, beyond mythology, beyond
the imagination into hyper-awareness. Look
    at the heartland of America—the streets
are not golden. The streets are cluttered with venomous serpents,
    headhunters, musky rats with chains in their hands,
quaking boots to rattle the magma of the earth,
    a rising phoenix slips below the horizon,
ashamed—streets of broken spirits, aching hearts,
    tumbling down the American Red-Bricked Road,
defunct, a cold wind in the veins, this mess that we’re in
    scatters our brows by open-ended barrels.
Who to target next? An intimidation as if
    the devil smiles in the details, as if the devil
is really in the cakes, in the hams, in a rotten egg, greyed
    like the slate sky of inhumane leagues
of locust-infested destruction tearing down the
    shapelessness of a country’s stalk, where
crisis wolves claw with skinny torsos along the red red red
    roads, a doggone dogging for a new route
in these dog days of August, where the words of
    MLK, Jr. have been muzzled
as if now capped in some Forbidden Zone in a desert,
    an alien-like Area 51 anonymousness
where mouths drip sands where time-lines go to waste,
    where dreams go to die up in smoke in the skies
in skid rows of battle cries, to the eyes
    an Inferno of the Unforgiven & Desolate:
A world seemingly inextinguishable, ablaze!
                                                             
                                  (unedited, written 8-20-2014)
                         





No comments:

Post a Comment