apr 30

 

May Day

How to begin the final day

of this tumultuous month? 

The cat has the right idea, writhing in the sunshine. 

I join her as long as I dare, then dart out to work. 

How to begin the final day? With sexy violet: 

the irises along the path plump and labial, 

edged with lavender, bursting with rich purples. 

The sun a glowing apple. Golden delicious. 

At work, I hum the Mr Rogers theme song

as I change into my uniform.

Smile and say hello to all my coworkers as they arrive, 

even the ones I don’t care for. 

My boss stops by to shoot the shit,

says he has a friend who’s a mortician, 

who over the years has given him a collection 

of titanium joints, which will not burn 

when the body is cremated. 

He also gave him a bunch of pacemakers. 

He says that every once in a while 

one of them buzzes.

I think of my coworker’s memorial service 

last Sunday, in the basement of a local 

union headquarters. It was a pretty grim affair, 

not so much a celebration of life 

as a shrug of acknowledgement. 

A dozen or so blue collar guys and drinking buddies. 

No one else from work showed up, and there was no

service or speech, just a bunch of tables 

arranged in a square with his old campaign buttons 

scattered across them. Take one, a sign implored. 

I grabbed a badge with a cobra saying Ready to Strike. 

A poster with a few old photos of him sat 

beside letters of thanks from Clinton, Al Gore, Obama. 

Meanwhile their successor is busy

brutalizing the country that suckled him

his entire life. I know I should shun the news

but the day is slow and I feel myself giving in,

sinking deeper and deeper into misery. 

This was not how I wanted to spend the day.

Without meaning to, I think about my dead coworker.

He used to record terrible Trump impressions 

and inflict them on everyone. It’s too bad

he won’t see this tyrant topple. 

At lunch they’re all talking over one another

about reality dating shows and romance novels 

about fairies and elves. I eat in silence 

then slip outside for a bite of that sun

but all I can see are the people 

slumped in the bus shelter, taking turns bending 

over a triangle of scorched tin foil. 

I want to reach into myself and pull out 

the fistful of joy I know is in there, somewhere, 

buried beneath the misery and frustration.

I want to take the hand of that child

who still lives inside me, still full of wonder.

But it keeps slipping out of my grip.

When I get home, I have supper

and listen to music and do some reading

and can’t seem to drag myself out

of the swamp I’ve sunken into.

Tomorrow is a new month. How to end

this final, difficult day?

With joy, with hope, with gratitude

for all I’ve been given. That’s what 

I wanted. The days are long.

The sky is pristine blue. The air

is cool and sweet and I am choking on it.

apr 29

In Memory of the Women of the Jefferson Street Safeway

One had pants that were barely more

than tight strings striping their flesh.

One had a twisting ponytail and a shiny nose

and legs that went on forever.

One had a smiling corgy with milky eyes.

One had an eagle tattooed across her chest,

a breast clutched in each talon.

One had an ivory spiral necklace

and rattlesnake bracelets and metal spikes 

pointing in every direction.

One had a baby. One had two babies.

One had a flip flop on one foot

and nothing on the other.

One had a t-shirt with the Morton salt girl

that said “I’m a salty bitch.”

One had a sunken face like a soft apple.

One had a thousand eyes and 

a pair of bony wings.

One had hair made of fire. 

One had hair made of the word “hair”

written over and over across her scalp.

One had a hole in her so wide

I could have stuck my hand through it

and grabbed her ass. 

One had mirrored sunglasses 

and she asked “What are you looking at?”

and I didn’t tell her 

I was looking at myself.

apr 28

 Beneficience

Elbow the passenger side window. 

Reach, grab, walk away. Don’t run.

Don’t look at your prize

until you’re a few blocks away.

Don’t think about what you left behind.

A square hole in the glass. 

A handful of crumbs glittering on the leather. 

A tiny vortex of rage

drilling into someone’s day,

hitting a vein of pure gold.

april 27

 I am crashing through layers of air

as if they were stories of a skyscraper

Wings mangled. Metal feathers 

corkscrewing down to stab the ground. 

I am gathering momentum. All my limbs 

waving, accumulating layers 

of trash and scrap and detritus

as I plummet through the ozone, 

through the canopy, through the waves

and sediment, all the way to the core

where it all burns off and I am left

a wisp of ash in the shape of a skeleton

continuing to pass through the Earth

and bursting through the ground

on the other side of the world, 

laughing

april 26

 Flirting with the Caterers

A synthesizer instead of 

a horn section

sequins instead of stars

I draped my work clothes

across the seat of the exercise bike

Hammered out the itinerary 

then accidentally erased it

Expressed my disdain

for food cars and pop-up shops

Then took it back

A ball python instead of a guinea pig

Kalamata instead of Castelvetrano

There’s a riot going on, she said,

as I carefully affixed the lime green

strip of paper around her slender wrist

and pressed the ends tight so it 

would last the evening

Though it didn’t

april 25

Childproof Locks

and so the people elected a regime of rich white-supremacist homophobic transphobic misogynists who saw this as their last shot to grab as much as they could before the people caught on to their grift and before the world ended accusation equaled confession with these assholes every word they spewed was projection they didn't just want power and money they were sadists and sociopaths and sickos the fact that their cartoonish villainy was not just tolerated or ignored but actually defended and even extolled was sickening we found it impossible to respect anyone who had ever thought that giving such dangerous buffoons the keys to the car would result in anything other than a horrible wreck those of us trapped in the back seat unable to open the doors due to the childproof locks that we were assured had been installed for our own safety felt mangled and paralyzed even before impact we saw the cliff approaching faster and faster and felt unable to stop the madmen behind the wheel who assumed that just before the vehicle flew off the edge and exploded in flames at the bottom they would be able to jump free at the last minute and that the wads of bills stuffed inside their suits would buffer them from serious injury as it had their whole lives that they would stand up and brush themselves off and walk away unscathed

and they were right

April 24

 Diaphonization

She stood behind the curtain, certain 

That we couldn’t see her, even though her shoes

Were clearly visible underneath.

Better to have your outer shell collapse than to rot from the inside.

Leached of all pigment

You fade but I can still feel your hand

your breath in my ear

A wax museum on the boardwalk, sand on my lips

All of us wax, or fat, or 

for the purest (luckiest) among us, glass

April 23

 2 poems about plants

1.

An eye plucked from its socket

And pressed into the soil

will sprout and grow into a thick, dense shrub

whose fruit will turn and watch

As you walk past.

A heart freed of its cage

will burrow deep into the dirt

and send up tendrils that will 

creep across the earth

and tangle around your feet,

scratch its name on your flesh with its thorns

A brain popped from its can

and covered in loam and nurtured

with rich, pungent fertilizer

will grow into a tree. When the wind blows 

it shall thrash its branches wildly

and cut itself to splinters

with its own sharp leaves

2.

When Spring's fingers dig into you,

do you shiver and whimper?

Do you squirm with pleasure

when the fruit trees shower you 

with their petals?

Not me. It's another miserable April

And once again I feel mocked by the blossoms

Bursting everywhere, using their colors

To try to distract me from this drab existence.

We're not even in the same kingdom,

Yet I'm being sexually molested

By these vegetal predators.

Just because they smell pleasant,

Must i spread my legs for this

non-consensual scented harassment,

this aromatic assault?
Do you think if you stuff me with pollen

I'll burst into bloom?

No. My gardens are withered, my fields are barren. 

Seeds rattle in their husks. The fruit's gone sour.

It may be Spring, but my body says it's November. 

I'm much too old to want to be fucked by a flower.

April 22

 xico City Blues

One parched summer night 
when the sidewalk sang like sandpaper
When the gutters cried out 
for just a sip of Yuengling
You took off your soda cracker glasses 
and smoked on your balcony and swore
At the salsa music sashaying up from
The self-serve car wash fourteen stories below.
Floors of gnawed linoleum. Palm stabbed 
with a toothpick. A cosmic splinter.
Woken up every hour by the fire alarm.
Stomach churning with Tums and Pepto-Bismol. 
Planets reeling around the sun's greasy axle,
You squinted into the C-shaped telescope
And marveled at the constellations dusting
Your t-shirt. A tiny arrow pointing, You Are Here.
Until you weren't. Nothing left but an ashtray 
of a grizzly bear peering into a pool
of butts swimming upriver to spawn. 
A crumpled Kerouac paperback. 
Half a pack of kosher franks in the fridge,

april 21

The Shape

Coughing up a speck. These doctors

don’t know anything. Don’t

have any clinical experience.

I saw

your house from the air. I saw

your face when you swiped

your badge.

A stranger sat briefly on my lap

That was when I caught my first glimmer of you

in my mind

Their harassment led, however circuitously,

to his suicide. A huge

cast-iron ball, orange with rust,

looming in the corner like a bathysphere.

I whispered the description

and the program heard me

I sang the shapes

and the machine lumbered along

behind me, picking up the notes I dropped

and that, my child, is how you were conceived

The rolled up carpet, the darts tournament

broadcast in every television in the hotel

with the volume knobs broken

He likes talking about

movies he’s never seen

and swinging his big bald head around

And someday, when all this has passed,

you will finally be born. And it

will have been too late.

All we will have left

is the shape

april 20

Burn in Hell

A man plucks scraps of trash

from the pavement with a claw 

at the end of a stick,

shoves them into a bag, 

continues his march. 

He skirts the metal barricades

surrounding the gaping sinkhole 

that opened up in the middle of the street

last week. macadam and brick and stone 

and dirt, layered like a cake down

into the darkness.

Easter is on April twentieth this year,

and the air is thick with the smell of weed

as cannabis aficionados celebrate

their favorite way to escape

the horrors of the world. 

It’s also Adolph Hitler’s birthday,

as well as Pineapple Upside-down Cake Day,

though its orgins are obscure.

I’m sitting on the porch

listening to Junior Kimbrough’s band

holler and stomp like a rickety station wagon

barreling along the litter-strewn highway.

One of them flicks a cigarette 

out the open window

where it sparks against on the asphalt

and it plucked by the man 

with the stick and the claw

and placed without a word into the bag

where it slowly, silently continues to smolder.

 

april 19

Voice

The reading features writers who studied 

with the late legendary Tom Spanbauer 

in his Dangerous Writing Workshops. 

. I could never get into Tom’s novels

but I saw him read once and he was understated 

and heartbreaking. There are four readers,

all of them taking their mentor’s advice

to write what they know. Barely-disguised 

autobiography from well-meaning people 

whose lives have been dull and privileged.

There is nothing dangerous or even mildly compelling 

about any of it. The last reader is the man

who organized the event, an ancient gentlemen

with thin, slicked-back white hair

who reads from his 750 page magnum opus.

I want so badly to love this man and his bravery, 

but I’m struggling. One of  Tom’s tenets, 

which his protege shares with us, is that 

the story is not as important as the voice telling it. 

I agree, but this doddering old man’s writing 

is dry and predictable without a unique voice. 

Perhaps a good editor could shape this 

into something. But how much time 

does this man have left? My heart aches. 

I want so badly for him to succeed, 

for his story to make it out into the world 

in a way that makes him happy. But lord is it dull. 

Everyone should write about their lives, 

but not everyone should share it. 

april 18

 Buyer’s Remorse

I’m so glad I had this dream of flying

glad I was able to live with that illusion

for a little while before remembering

I can’t help myself

I see that hot girl on the screen

and need to know

what’s that she’s putting

into her mouth

Getting older means

you run the risk

of shitting yourself a little

when you sneeze

Do I undermine the horror

if I follow with a reminder

that we are still sending weapons to a country

founded for victims of genocide

so they can in turn commit genocide

All this time I’ve been mistaking

the second hand for the minute hand

And now I’m feeling that universal resentment

as the clock radio goes off

and I wake up to a man asking another man

what it was like to go up against Kobe

The morning sun gleams off

the glazed hide of the ceramic elephant

on the windowsill, raising its trunk triumphantly

I get vertigo peering over the edge

we’re all about to tumble off of

I wonder if at the last moment

I’ll feel a little giddy as I kick my legs 

and flap my arms and wish 

we had not voted for gravity

April 17

Hinged

One your wings (legs) closed

you never spread them again. 

Your eyes remained open, though,

even when they removed and weighed

your organs one by one, 

the assistant chewing gum

though he wasn’t supposed to

as he typed the numbers.

They remained open when they 

placed you in the trough

and slid it into the furnace.

They stayed open through the burning,

and everyone present agreed

that they were the most beautiful eyes

they had ever seen. They

look at me now every time

I open the little cabinet,

its wooden doors parting 

on their hinges

like legs, like wings, 

preparing to fuck, to fly,

to let in the light

April 16

Clog

I knelt until the hexagonal tiles 

bit into my knees

I gazed into the cool, clear pool

impassive as glass

I pointed deep into my throat

as if to say “look, this is where 

the words are.” I could feel them 

lodged in there, a gummy wad 

of want and grievance

making me gag. I could barely breathe.

I knelt until my muscles ached

and then I lay down 

on the cold, white floor

Curled up like an ear

And still

I could not expel the prayer

April 15

 Drum Major Instinct

Practice relinquishing freedom.

Practice acquiescence.

Practice living with constraints. 

Practice obedience. 

Learn to grovel. Learn to beg.

Learn to bend over, surrender.

Learn to buckle. Learn to follow.

Learn to suck and learn to swallow. 

Grow accustomed to helplessness.

Grow familiar with righteous anger. 

Become intimate with paralysis.

Become close friends with terror. 

Remember that all that grows exists

 to be consumed or stomped to dust. 

Remember that this world is for

the winners. And you have lost. 

April 14

 Thunderhead

The amber clouds part. Honey dissipates.

Syrupy piss dissolves in a cold, clear rush.

I savor the sticky aftertaste of a dream 

in which my tongue was worming its way 

through rich soil, tunneling into 

some body’s slippery velvet.

I throw off the comforter and marvel

at how much longing remains

in this seemingly barren reservoir.

The planet is noisy with morning,

teeming with latent desire.

The blinds rise, curtains spread 

of their own accord. 

Wings beat against the window.

Throbbing, thrumming. Golden.

 I throw it open.

April 13

Coachella

You seemed so beautifully harmless

standing there in your kicky heels 

that looked impossible to rub in 

They made your calves look anxious

Could you tell how out of breath 

I would easily become if pursued 

could you see in my squint 

How easily I give up 

I clamp my jaws and cling with all my claws

 to my tendency to hem and haw,

 to protect my life of quiet procrastination

Did I ever show you my log

of how many times I missed my bus

because I was afraid to cross

 before the light changed?

You were the one pinched like an hourglass 

but I was the one who was bottom-heavy 

with sand. 

It’s been years now.

You’re still standing on that corner,

hands scrambling inside your purse

as the stampede flows around you,

still wondering why the world refuses

 to  cooperate, wondering when

they’ll raise the floodgate,

not noticing that the dam has already  burst.

April 12

Sunnyside

I walked through my old neighborhood.

Marveling at the landmarks that used to pass every day but had forgotten.

The mosaicked bench in memory

Of a killed bicyclist. The bed and breakfast

Where my mother stayed. We played

Gin rummy in the kitchenette. 

Then there are the things that have changed.

The courtyard of a seedy apartment complex

Now bursting with manicured foliage.

Shelves filled with books and a sign

“Talk is cheap. These books are cheaper”

Beside a jar full of coins and dollar bills. 

A house a friend used to live in,

And another. Three separate apartments

Of women I went on dates with.

Tibetan prayer flags. Rainbow windsocks. 

A black cat comes up so I can let her,

Is immediately bored.

I miss the brightly colored houses, the flowers,

The crockery spilling out 

of a soggy cardboard box.

April 11

 Take Me to the Microscopic River

1

AI slop farms cranking out content. 

Crow parts skittering across the floor.

 Seahorse swimming in a sea of glue. 

Echos writhing in the corners. 

Piltdown particles multiplying, expanding. 

A microscopic store selling microscopic 

Merchandise in a microscopic strip mall.

2

I don’t hear your body, just your blood

 spreading its gossip.

There are wheels turning in your hands. 

Your fingers sprout hooks and loops 

to help grip each other. Your eyes 

are blank sheets of metal. 

Your mouth is the word mouth

written in lipstick across 

your featureless face.

 

3

Every pleasure becomes a pain 

if it goes on for too long.

What was the longest orgasm 

you ever experienced? The most intense?

The most surprising, the most complicated? 

The most disappointing?

What happened when you emerged

from that tunnel of bliss? Was there 

or was there not

a sudden chill in the air?

4

Bones grown so heavy

they tear through your skin

Plastic filling every cell

Clogging every pore

5

Buoyancy, fluency, despair.

Arrogance, eloquence, bondage. 

We were all on edge

We were all so scared 

The wheels in your hands stopped turning

And your blood stopped its gossip

So I could finally hear your body

Even though it was so minuscule 

I couldn’t see it 

It was whispering

“Break me”

it was saying

“Hold me under”

And then, eventually,

it was screaming 

April 10

The Last Poem from Earth

All the entrances are locked. 
You can’t get into the building 
without a key card. I think of following
One of the students in, but that seems creepy. Besides, I’m not totally sure I’m in the right place.
There are no signs for the reading anywhere.
So I sit on a bench and watch the kids
Hanging out with their bikes and their dogs
As if the world was not, in fact, on fire.

Finally the friend I’m supposed to meet comes out,
Saying he only got in because he 
Happened to see an acquaintance through the glass.
We are both irritated and by the time we get up to the proper classroom, the reading his well underway. 
There are no chairs left so the professor
In charge runs and gets us one. 
We expect him to bring another but he doesn’t. 

I haven’t been in a classroom in years. 
and I feel geriatric. The building is new,
but the wooden chairs in the room are all mismatched and old. They make me feel
Both sad and comforted.

The first poet reads verse loosely based
On sijo, a Korean poetic form.
There are lots of footnotes
Which he good-maturely admits 
he included because he found the facts in them
More interesting than the poems 
they inspired.

The second poet is thin and pretty.
High, cheekbones, sinewy neck,
Shiny pinprick eyes. She talks about time 
as if she thinks she’s the first poet to talk about time.
She had flown in from Cambridge. 
Her mind blown by time zones. I picture
a globe as a peeled orange.
Her recent collection has a title that sounds 
like a parody. She reads her poems 
like they are the minutes of a board meeting. 
Her work is hazy, without any interesting language
or a single strong image

After exactly twenty minutes she says,
“I’ll just close by reading
the last poem from Earth.” I laugh
but no one else does. She isn’t smiling.
She explains that Earth is the title 
of one of her four books. Four more 
than I’ve had published. 
She reads the poem smoothly and evenly.
I don’t remember a single word o

April 9

 Chinese Tariff Blues

A few extra cents jingling. A few stiff notes 
scratching together. Should be enough
To drown out the screaming. 

How much can the pocket hold before it splits?
How much food can you cram down your gullet
before you’re sick?

The legs of the pullets atrophy. 
The gutters overflow.
The rich drop their britches 
as the norovirus hits. Look out below.

April 8

Self-driving Wheelbarrow

Tanks run up and down her arms, leaving pink tread marks on her skin. Spiders too, and ducks, rolling their eggs uphill with their beaks. She worked at an offshore mannequin warehouse where she drove an aquatic forklift until they hired a school of mackerel to replace her. She read a post on social media that claimed that those cold plums she found so delicious were all genetically modified and coated in a skin of insecticide. Still better than the wax ones she’d plucked from the wax tree as a child. She tired to apply for jobs online but she couldn’t prove she wasn’t a robot. She took a job twirling signs for a mattress store until someone tried to mug her and she stabbed him in the throat with the pointy end of the sign. It’s a dangerous world, the ghost of her mother said. They can sue you even here in the afterlife. Right on cue she accidentally swallowed a rubber glove and the man who had broken into her apartment to molest her drove her to urgent care, saying he’d wait for her in the car. The doctor knocked a rubber hammer against various parts of her anatomy then placed the stethoscope on her tongue and told her to say ah. She didn’t say ah. She screamed it.

april 7

 

A shadow slips in and out of the pavement cracks.

A shivery lick of flame leaps over the sandbags

and runs laughing toward the dry underbrush.

The wind picks up. The trees cry for help

but I’m busy looking at my phone, 

watching stand-up comics jump 

back and forth over a hole in the ground. 

Seven men and one woman 

in white hard hats and yellow vests 

march single file 

along a maze of salt. Quicklime. Hoarfrost. Chalk. 

Two lovers lag behind. They unstrap 

each another’s equipment

And tug each other down

 into the shaggy arms of the ditch

that cuts through the patches of ragweed. 

A cloud of pollen and glitter rises up. 

They serenade one another in static.

The search light scrapes the sky all afternoon.

The sentries switch it off after dusk. 

The lovers stand up, brushing the grasshoppers

and drone propellers from their khakis. 

Signal Blossoms

Transmitters trapped in glaciers. Fires paralyzed. 

Pull the laces tight. What’s that burst of light?

A spiral flare, a firefly cupped in your palm?

Squeeze your fist. The comedians cackle.

One of them suddenly gets a nosebleed 

but keeps on laughing. 

Sweat, rain, gall, vitriol

Giant sheets of glass flatten the grasses.

Clear as a pond, empty as a net,

all the world’s reflections 

get snatched by children desperate 

to see something, anything other 

than what we have already shown them.

April 6

 

I Never Asked For This

He is sand now, he is crumbs

and not even dumped into

the river like he wanted. 

Not much grayer than

he was when he still lived.

A cardboard box with a soggy bottom

The thunk of plastic wheels

bumping over the curb.

About what he expected.

but not what he deserved. 

Disrespectful? Rotten.

Presumed and not consulted.

Consumd and then insulted.

I am mindless. I am numb.

I am out of ink and dumb.

I look around, gather the last

of what he left behind.

Assemble the scraps and bind them

into…what? Aw, crap. 

Another fucking book.

Wrecking Ball

I am sleeping like a ship

Full of bones and bullets

Buried in the sand

Where there used to be an ocean 

I am sleeping like an aggie,

like a cat’s-eye or an alley,

rolled into a crack between the floorboards 

of the house that I grew up in

listening, then as now,

for the first resounding note

of the symphony of the wrecking ball

I am sleeping like the rubble 

of the house that I grew up in

I am sleeping like a floorboard,

creaking as I snore. Most of all,

I am sleeping the satisfied sleep

of the wrecking ball

I am sleeping like a slap 

Like a bar of soap squirted 

From your fist

I am sleeping like a butter knife

In the bottom of the drawer,

 beneath a blanket of spoons,

dreaming of its marriage

to the whetstone 

Crowd Control

 The justice center remains boarded up

Five years after the protests. 

People still ask me 

if the city is as dangerous as what they hear.

They seem skeptical when I tell them no,

Private security companies are thriving.

Their employees are like cops 

without the unions to protect them. 

If they fuck up, they’re easily replaced.

A guy in cut off shorts gets on the bus.

Butterfly tattoos on his thighs. 

He should be thrown in jail

A woman torn in half

By her own cleavage 

My wrists should be bound

With zip ties

A million microscopic whirlpools

Hungry to suck you under

A million spiral staircases

To tumble down

The blinking lights, the barricades,

the tear gas.

Real power means never being 

Held accountable 

Real love means smiling

Through the endless waves of hate

The cops may be having difficulty

filling their vacancies,

but there are still plenty of people

eager to commit acts of violence

in order to preserve their fantasy of order.

The front of the car crunched 

the side of the bus scraped raw

I’m just calling to see if you’re safe

No need to speak. Just nod

Or shake your head 

And I’ll know somehow

Gas Leak

Empty cans of paint loaded into the trunk of a rental car. 

The desire to return to an imagined state of purity. Was there ever one? 

They evacuated the building while the fire department tried to find the source of the leak. They gave the all clear then immediately rescinded it. I stood out in the sun, watching people walk by. A man carrying an assembled tent on his back walked past, never once setting it down.

When they say purity, they mean whiteness. They want everyone to be white. As if that was inherently a good thing. 

He complains that the only car they had available to rent was a Prius and that when he got in his head touched the roof. “I had to drive all scrunched over,” he said, then gave me a fist bump, which was his way of saying both hello and goodbye. Like aloha. 

And the government was busy kidnapping brown people and putting them in jail in El Salvador and everyone just kind of accepted it, even if they didn’t think it was okay. What could they do?

And I forgot my password. And the cat refused to sit in my lap, even though she usually likes to.

Of course many people vote against their best interests.

And I tried not to stare but I sneaked a peek when I thougth she wasn’t looking but she caught me and I felt terrible. But I knew I would probably do it again. 

I’m white and to be honest I don’t think it’s anything special. Though a little part of me, a little lump in my scrotum, is relieved because it makes me less likely to be spirited away to rot in a jail in El Salvador. 

Belief in the existence of purity is a kind of madness. 

They never found out what caused the gas leak.

And I went out to happy hour and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu and felt terrible. And it wasn’t even worth it.

What Happens to Shadows During an Eclipse

 The wall of light could not hold back

The rushing torrent of water. 

It could not stop the stampede or the fire 

or the tanks. We were so proud of it, we spent 

So much time building it. And it proved to be

totally ineffectual against all the things

that could destroy us. But oh it was pretty. 

I guess we thought its shimmering surface 

would mesmerize the forces of chaos 

the way it mesmerized us. 

But they barreled right through

without stopping to admire the swirling colors

and glowing layers we had worked so hard

to cultivate and collect. In retrospect,

we should have used stone. We should have 

dug a moat. We should have erected

an electrified fence, thirty feet high 

and topped with razor wire. 

But we worried that would make us 

too much like them. We thought 

we would preserve our integrity

if we chose to protect ourselves

only with the most ethereal of defenses. 

And so we were enslaved, and so we suffered,

And so we died. Without glory, without dignity,

and even though -or because?- we were right.