aayoungit’s never quiet
in the city at night
however i’ve found
if my boots are planted quietly
amidst 3am lamplight
standing in space once occupied
by a storied brick house where my
great grandfather aged 90
lived and died
i can hear elm street recalling sadly
that he left for the hereafter
decades before i arrived
this 30th of May
even the fireworks
sound tired
who knew
the 6th mass extinction
on the planet
would be set into motion
not by a furious comet
instead thrown into chaos
by an insidious cloud
of misinformation
(que piano music)
what we call eternity lasts
approximately 3 seconds
it is the state of a happy heart
at the moment of your death
as your brain powers down
the last thing it processes are images of
everything you ever loved
mercifully
that is our shared heaven
They
will sell you
candy cigarettes,
insulin,
Camel Wides,
chemotherapy,
God,
nicotine patches,
life insurance,
and a bronze casket
all
in one lifetime.
to quantify what 189,00 dead Americans
equates to within the psyche of this country
we must apply the correct math
due to lack of competent leadership within the White House
the COVID19 pandemic has been allowed to spread
across schools to cemeteries
into three Vietnams
or sixty-three
September the 11ths
Donald Trump should be made to place coins
from his own pocket
over the eyes of every corpse
he could have prevented &
perhaps the saddest notion is
even if the great king
cared to part with his shekels
our country will still be left
more bankrupt
from his mistakes
than him
last night
shots rang out
slicing August’s midnight miasma
a quivering queen city listened
as Cherokee bells
echoed over cobblestones
black swan feathers topping lost hopes
filling horse-drawn funeral carriages
eighteen shot
four dead
blood pooling at the base
seven screaming hills
four shootings in Cincinnati
ninety fatal minutes
national news coverage
backlit red images
of our violent infection
suffer do we
these slings & arrows
whispering sacred prayers
to a god unlistening
please make
every bullet fired
explode into a spray
of evening primroses
who can sleep
through the raging silence
of all our canceled parties
you are a book
i have kept open
in dimmest candlelight
long past
the reason of midnight
the moment he turned
and walked away
our world became peckinpah
i can no longer discern
whose blood
my hands are weeping over