Iron Currents
Despite a lack of clouds in sight,
A bolt of lightning cracks the sky.
Collapsing buildings push the air
Through microphones and radio towers.
I feel the wind from in my shop,
Returning to familiar ground.
On every bar of steel I craft,
My perspiration leaves a glare.
They moisten hands that forge the sheets
Another rivets to a frame.
Our sweat condenses over years,
Amassing to a thundercloud.
Blood seeps into the sea and flows
To farmers’ irrigation tracts.
A fruitful harvest fills my plate,
Alongside banquet tables of
The deities in conference rooms,
At whose command the lightning strikes.
Metallic flavor finds a home
On every morsel we devour,
For iron carried by the sea
Passed webs of roots and found its way
To every loaf the bakers sell,
And every dollar I dispense.
Tree of Liberty
Rotten roots dig deep into parched packed soil
once watered with the blood of tyrants,
now bone dry as dawn has broken on a devil’s day.
Monsters stalk these lands,
stirring ghosts of atrocities past and
breathing new life into foes half-vanquished.
This tree once bore fruit, you know.
Sweet for some, bitter for most.
It was, at least, feeding us.
Now it is nothing but wreck and ruin.
A splintered husk of broken boughs
studded with scavengers sucking the last scraps of life.
Do not cry for this wretched waste.
Look ahead.
You mustn’t forget rot is part of the order of things─
today’s decay feeds tomorrow’s seeds.
Reappropriations
We’ll turn all the altars into cutting boards and threshing floors,
And pointy hats use to chop opinions, shell seeds, husk and grind corn.
On and around the private beaches we’ll lay blankets and hang signs,
And direct all the multiform nudists seeking orgies to form lines.
The vacation and second homes we’ll turn into artists’ residencies
For those mavericks who, instead of paint, experiment with human feces.
The scales of justice will measure stampage for love letters,
And we’ll make lingerie of judges’ robes, and sex toys of bailiff’s fetters.
All the walls will be converted into housing complexes without waiting lists,
And there will be as many elevators as there are tenants.
All families will be converted into orphanages, children into parents,
Parents into children, and blood will be as water — flowing constant.
The black lines of borders will become rubber bands, flagpoles
Will turn catapult, and travel will be saltigrade and aerial.
Soldiers will become waiters, grenades rolls, bullets butterballs,
And everyone will be given a blunt knife in place of a gun to spread it all.
The impossible will become possible, the inescapable will be forfeiture
Sacrificed like a lamb to the slaughter — which has been razed into a pasture.
