Clarkson

This street, my Clarkson street,
I know you are not pristine
You are dirt and glass and tall grass
You are 1888 and 1892
You are self-realization and unconditional love
But I have seen you slam yourself to the ground
I have heard you scream without thought
And fire gunshots into the city sky
I believe in the collective whole, we scaffolds to masterpiece
I have hope, I am colorblind
I am music and the beggars story
I am bounded by Mount Zion's love and the comfort of a warm meal
You have given me my life in one longitude
You are my backbone and my love's resting place

11 August 2013

The Newest

I roll restlessly on carpet
In a house you’ve never seen
Scaling rungs of a ladder
Gray and splintering
But it’s the ladder you built
In photos, I lose my life
Sucked dry and seen only
In pixels, pasted and stamped.

I have goals and knowledge, tools
Like gloves and buckets
Gazing at plums and forgetting
How to pluck them
Fine motor skills that need tuning
No calculus required, but
I am rusting in disuse
A canopy destroyed by hurricane’s gale

Being pampered and powdered
Taught us lethargy
Our skills of discipline are
Wanting, on indefinite furlough
In this imitation Mecca
We sow energy and seeds
Our liberators, fuming at the decline
Retail and dollars and budding consumers
And I sit vacant

I need Colorado peaches, dripping
Down our chins and staining our smocks
Sticky fingers kneading shoulders
We’re hair and coffee and indecision
Canvassing the town and scouring
For what,
I am still gathering.
I erase all anger,
And I am curious
At the ease.