Then we stood by the wall when the East leaned to topple,
sung the chorus of bricks and mortar

shadows picked themselves
up again in event.

Birds perched on wire to watch children squawk
who flap their arms like chickens making dinosaur talk. 

In the age of Glastnost spread wide, there were strokes 
of petechiae and Perestroika stressing my crutches, I cried 

my lips expressed in tongues clear and sharp atop the purple blob
on Gorbachev’s head that stared with the munificence of Jesus.

AD 2025—I step aside, the Christ comes down, gobbles me whole—!
With five bites of the cities, like dominoes, the electricity falls

in Madrid, Paris, Lisboa, Barcelona.

We don’t matter to goats, iguanas, and toads on the D.C. road
or Beijing, Belgium — all DEAD —

be they blue, 
be they white, 
be they red

not for me, not for the kids, not for you

they all feed the papers and the television
to stuff us like olives, like crab rangoon

in Madrid, Paris, Lisboa, Barcelona, 
because Versailles fears the people, don’t you?

Kings think us marching-inadequate, etiquette-lacking, 
rioting-in-search-of-a-clue.  Rebels without applause.

LET THEM EAT CAKE!     We’re not lying!  

Why would we lie? 
To lie, why would I? 
Why would I lie?
Why indeed?

in Madrid, Paris, Lisboa, Barcelona

in Madrid,
Paris,
Lisboa,
Barcelona.

The ballot box knows only one answer for the noodles in my brain.
My ex-wife knows to heal the world making cans of jam,

jarring pickled relish,
serving coffee to a guest.

We have not time to make sweeping changes.  
The clocks tick, tick, tick! for one hundred summers alone.

We’ve no time to stop the clocks and make away
to Spain, Canada, or Switzerland, Venice, Rome, Bahrain!

We make no time and now the neighbor is a frightened friend,
una cosa preziosa, un anello prezioso in our twisted, tetric fat hands.

Surpassing richness in the land of my home, in the land, in the loam
where the hills crumble slowly, and the lost are worth their weight in coal—

Sea borne travelers, sail we us!—we, disrupted in distress, crying weak
in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid City and the rest.

We are opulent mules, inconsequential, rolling off the ton
of brick that held a century, dying to sing along

on a bus to El Dorado, built of iron in every bone.
A curtain, a shade of velvet chain and brocade

singing now! Singing graciously hear us!  Singing now—!
Remember when we kissed, and nothing could fall?