American Spring, 2016

I.  With grains of good intention they feed us

hysterics through flat screens; force worship Big Brother – the all-seeing eye;

                  take Somas; repeat.

II.                Repetition –

Bernays’ democratic persuasion to

concoct a potion – panic-propaganda,

& streamline it straight into the bloodstream

of Industrial America.

III.             "A toast,” they say, “to the frenzy… Freedom!”

clink with blood cocktails; (there’s an America, dying

to be reborn – yes we can –  diluted ideologies

that still surge in the veins of its people).

IV.              Whitewashed bones cracking

on the periphery of a new day;

Pearl Harbor,

                  9/11,

      the Invasion of Normandy;

      pump terror into America’s heartland; placate the masses

      with violent distraction. We are tired

      of death; of funneling humans through the war grinder

V.                 Unknowing last notes from 19 year old soldiers

to mothers scattered across suburbs. Memorials –

an open wound; fathers ruminating services

for the mangled limbs of sons & daughters.  

VI.              So, crouching low on building’s rooftops, interspersed

throughout the cities of this blood-soaked land, we lie in wait,

to cut through the wire of coded phrases; political

trickery; the two party system of one scam; pay attention

to PTSD; the limbless veterans who

hang dollar signs

on subway stoops;

VII.           (High above the Metropolis, they nod in towers, palming medals;

eyes averted to man-made constructions –  tattered maps of territories,

religious artifacts, the stain of morality).

VIII.        But we, fidgeting,

pick at our lip’s dried stitches

– our generation, a trembling chrysalis;

and wait for the sound when

the  gestation period

(two hundred and fifty-two)

closes, and a new day

stirs.