Independence Day Parade

The punch drunk parade
of each staggering day
burning down to embers.
Ethereal smoke rising from each float
with its vicious gifts,
its 2020 visions –

I can’t unsee

how little we care about each-other.
Polite smile masks, cast away
crashing through the darkest Black Friday ™
no petty comfort unclaimed.
Rights strapped to their chest
in live ammo cosplay
minor inconvenience
parading as tyranny,
“I only want a haircut,
who are you to stop me?”
Lost Cause flag
still waving for a dead country,
still spreading its infection
of supremacy

I can’t unsee

so many plagues, hidden plagues.
The heavy clank of chains
amplified in this parade.
A cell phone held up like a mirror
streaming video clear,
the compression of 400 years
rendered in under 9 minutes
a “peacekeepers” knee
pressing a man’s neck
as his mother’s ghost gasps through his last breath,
unbearable to look at,
impossible to look away
from a world that never changes until it does,
not with a gift, but with something we pay
for over and over and over
echoing in those last cries…

We can’t unhear

how much we care about each-other.
The world spilling out of safety
for something larger than ourselves,
paper thin masks hoping to shield
one pandemic,
while our lungs share the same pepper spray
of another.
The paper thin excuses of this parade
pierced by the rubber bullets
that spray through these crowds
amidst the crack of nightsticks

We can’t unhear

The muffled subtext in the wake of every claim
that “All lives matter”,
the “some restrictions apply,
offer not valid for all citizens, see store for details”
coming through on all frequencies,
puncturing the consistency,
the unending history
of denial, our true national heritage

We can’t unsee

The falling white power
monuments that popped up like middle fingers
each time there was progress,
the constant reminder that no victory
was enough, crashing
even as the highest office scrambles
to salvage them, implores
us to ignore the pandemic,
both of them,
to walk over our dead
and go back to normal,
pencils down
no questions at this time.
The words of a man not worth naming
trail off into the vacuum of self
as he helplessly grasps at the mirage of normalcy

Can’t you see

there is no path back,
to those golden days
that rot in the imagination of those
with the luxury of daydreams,

Once you see

how the illusion works
there is no normal to go back to.
There never was.

From the collection Carry-out Carton Fortress

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