Of Wildflowers on Plastic

The clipped wings of fireflies and flat rings of pine
No fairies to be found beneath the wilted corn
The sun low in sky as paper snowflakes shine
Oh Invisible prize we chased, a deserved prize was born

Smoggy cities hot-air ballooned
A single pop
I jumped off
Shredded rags on soft skin
My body no longer so soft
Obsidian houses blown to smithereens
Are we really savage beasts?
I say more like broken machines

Farms and flambéed parking lots
The nights were long and the were are longer
Mind and soul broken, Corpses rot
Never did I break them stronger
And now those fields of wheat are just dead weight
Sunset burns blaze them black
Ashen landscapes state to state
The wildflowers are coming back

Bridges crying concrete- crumbling into dust
The poppies fade into the city of tears
I took the road less traveled and
Run run run- b-beat beat beat

In rust waited the Volkswagen
Pillow cushions filled with soil
who drew that… dragon…?
A merry-go-round – my mind recoils – my warm breath in the dark
Two backpacks piled like roly-polies
Huddling for what? Warmth? Protection?
Soft salt on my cheek, slowly cooling
As I left I felt a strange affection

Then came the land of dust, unclear
If end the “Dick’s rusty saloons”
Glitchy jingle agitates my ear
I wanted to hear the moon
Yellow tape in the casino corner
Trampled, wreathed and overgrown
That cold smooth bison no longer bucks
There goes last of the buffalo

A stampede in my brain and I leave him
I and the armadillos
Can only hope that this scorch turns
A last glimpse of my artfully armored friends – I fall into

The nothingness of the Midwest
Warehouse after field after
Warehouse after lone crow’s nest
In a lonely house on a lonely rafter
Stained beige apron in a stained beige kitchen
Next to dusty highway sunflowers
I stole a ‘106 jeep which in
I raced the birds for hours

My tires screech, I stop and ram
The rocky mouth of Uncle Sam
Like a looking glass the dumps remain
I feel the pain
Of 10 billion people slain by commercial commodities
Unnatural oddities
What did they want to be?
Before we were grilled over our own gas fireplace

Pioneer wagons once traveled here
I think I’m one of them
The ground I bled red
Powdered snow finds my face- no longer so far away

The mountains, at last I passed
I smell the air, petrichor
How do I remember that?
I haven’t felt rain since I was 4
I was Only 17 drenched in sweat and poison
I saw my last butterfly
Watched it die in my soft & sweaty oyster hands – A little pearl… The last pearl
My gaze turns up – the grasses whirl

Running past the evergreens
Feet burned raw and back cooked rare
Things live here I’ve never seen
I take a knife so goes my hair
Something shed to mark my passing
‘To the realm of the holy and humble
Cause nothing here is everlasting
Glaciers melt and cliff sides crumble

I think the trees are calling me
Only as they called every other
But us woodpeckers took liking to telephone poles
Black out, candle covered

front my feet lays damp the fallen lark
Arboreal eyes watch scarlet encroach
Upon rotting leaves this scene lays dark
Northwestern frosts kindly approach
How unmelancholy lays this scene
To the tiny world below me
How ordinary it must seem
Damp maples and mosses have shown me

I need not shed a single tear
Like fallen leaves I float down into compost
And at last I am truly happy
And when I die
Oh how I’ll die!
At last become a christmas feast
Bones calcifying some sacred beast
My meat turns to fertilizer

So then I naturally I will be
No more hurting, No more burn
No more smoggy summer days
Where the sun’s soft light did slowly turn
To blood-kaleidoscopic rays
Smell of smoke and dingy bars
We drank prickly pear brandy ‘neath electric stars
But that never felt right anyway

The pitter-patter of humanity
Clashing colors slipping and sliding
Tiny antiquities: Red, green, blue
A cabin in the woods
This isn’t right, this isn’t wrong
morals all artificial
So was this our destiny?
What a beautiful view, of wildflowers on plastic