Broken Laws, Broken Generations

Press, slide.

Tell me it was for the hunger.

For hunger is when we know

anything is not an empty cry.

 

Picture of discolours,

grey.

Between my palms,

you reaching

beneath the auburn sky –

stay.

 

Half a world away,

whittled down by another war

is all that pins my hand

to a metallic case.

Press, slide.

 

You, muro-ami on an overcast bay,

shivering reef.

Shadowed by a bloodshot

paddling only to be left

with yourself –

decay.

 

Debt that we can’t pay.

An issue without resolution

is saying drought despite the green.

Beauty despite the bloodied face.

What first felt like an insult

was a counsel to reason.

 

Tales foundered to deceit,

bewitching hearts and souls

like a zebra dove stunned

at the front yard.

 

Window hammered. The heat

penetrated the peaceful room.

 

How crocodile tears feed the dead.

The dead that became an empty boast.

I see her, my dearest dust,

crumbles in earliest blaze, as the winds of dawn

poisoned near a desert mine.

 

Make room for a country of the silenced proud.

For their disposition is to tease –

dilletante, laissez-faire, occupiers. Statues

moulded. Surface

tension and pretense

lost to the cunning generation and undimensional eyes.

 

Make a law that whimpers break.

Fastened to go steady with the State.

 

You,

broken into pieces,

like the safety glass raining down.

No more passage.

What is in you?

What made you? Mark in it.

But for this

you must stand still.

What has broken

has not gone away.

 

Aged mothers, waiting. There wasn’t time

enough to see our fathers again.

 

Mea culpa, you have to find it.

And this, alas, Ocean, my flaw ticks

your enormous frown.