smokestack northern skylines
beckon dusty southern hands
brothers
and husbands
take the rails
trade
muddy water
banks
for
howlin’ bloody
streets
factory fair share
lily white lie,
american dreams
gone in
smokestack lightning
blues collars look best on black necks
wiff of
parking lot
cigarette smoke
wraps me
around
hfstival mosh pit
1999
***
bar bathroom
vapor
stale floor
beer & vomit
and i’m pledging
STG
class of ‘02
***
spliff stank
drifts
on clink from
cheersing friends
snaps me
present and
accounted for
to brand new
Boulder CO.
abode
pint raised revelry
welcoming to adulthood
***
ten years from
now
freshly brewed tea
medicinal only
reminds of mile high
house warming
2010
there is a place
near the Maryland border
where the rock breaks right through the ground
and the gray hands that pull it from the earth
are the same that lay the foundations
of the little gray houses that line the road
cut to fit without mortar
the granite smoothes its
rough edges to gentle parabolas
under two hundred years of gravity
built before the great depression
before the dust bowl migrants
and mr Jackson defied the supreme court
when black was black
and white was white
before The american dream
gray hands built gray windows for gray faces
to, upturned, catch the sun on a sunny day
and the only dreams
are those that came to tightly closed eyes
