solstice
solstice
honey gold streaming
gleaming glass
windows infused with light
the house sings a sun song
Luggage begs to be hauled inside
Cares not about tired hands
Home spreads her arms
Welcomes her family after summer vacay
Garage space receives them in disgust
Pouts over the ceiling-high Christmas boxes
Busy bees empty the minivan
Drag in bag after bag, souvenir after souvenir
Dogs greet their humans
Wiggle their hind ends with frantic tails
Little sheltie, Zoey sneaks out the door
Avoids being seen by all
Mom spots the door ajar
Does not spot big sheltie, Rocky
Dad secures the animals
Brings Mom two Tylenol to the couch
Adrenaline shoots eyes wide open
Hammers her heart
She hears hail in July!
Thanks loud, pesky sound for disturbing her
The newly licensed teen left 45 minutes ago
Drove to Lexington for the first time
Mom’s chest thunders inside
Feels like a runaway train
Dad tunes in to her claim
Assures it’s KT, crumpling a chip bag
Mom squints her eyes
Listens harder
She breathes in
Exhales fear
There were no hailstones
only the stoning of a nap
Mom’s baggage weighs her down
She has carried it and more for 18 years
Heaviness and joy rest equally on the scale
The scale cares not about tired moms.
Silent imaginations, he thought
One would feel the dead in the nothingness
And the nothing in the dead,
Never mind the vibrations
When imagination steps through
The veil of reality, the reaper’s shroud.
Once inside the grimness, he finds
Horsemen dreams are radical nightmares.
There’s a Silver Lining,
Same shade as a skull
And all these Safflower thistles
Can’t plug the bullet holes
Garden of Amaryllis blooms
Soaked in blood
The Spearmint does nothing
To freshen the air
It’s Showtime, sold out performance
Nobody wants to be there.
The dread orchestra crashes
With deafening cymbal clashes
With walls of crunching guitars
And horn blare hammers
Synthesized strings tie up a heart
Hanging it in the arch of a harp
Electronic cues try to beat life
Into a pulse that’s gone flat
Noise that will not cease
Until choirs of silents voices sing
Leave a message.
To tap a green button would stop the noise
But break the floodgates holding back the tears
And what good what it do to confirm what’s known
Because there’s more than one life on the other side
To cue the orchestra again.
Imagined silence had already drug
A soul disparaged by
New thresholds of human evils
To the bottom of these emotional seas
Not one thought forewarning
The darkest lesson of reality
In the ultimate weight
Of a loved one’s hopeless hoping
Creating nightmare noise
Folk song in G
We send a few billion to Israel
That net grants for New York couples in illegal settlements
They send their extra cash back to their congressmen
And we get to die on nine eleven
But there’s no such thing as a good racist
That Star of David don’t fly upsidedown
Why wait
Assimilate
You just don’t need to be Hebrew any more
There’s a young woman all dressed in black leather
She is free and can work and vote
There’s never been a woman like this in history
But she wouldn’t marry a white guy
“if you paid me”
But there’s no such thing as a good racist
That Rebel flag don’t fly upsidedown
Why wait
Assimilate
You just don’t need to be Afro anymore
Now I look back on my own relatives
We killed millions for king and God
When what was left was chased out of England
We came over here and killed some Indians
But there’s no such thing as a good racist
That Union Jack don’t fly upsidedown
Why wait
Assimilate
No tengo se un blancito mas
So if you want to change the world
Lift the downtrodden, feed the poor
Go to Zaire or the Philippines
And you might find the girl of your dreams
“Cause there’s no such thing as a good racist
We don’t need to raise that flag again
Why wait
Assimilate
We just don’t need to be racists anymore
We just don’t need to be racists anymore
