Once Upon a Time

Sep 20, 2010 21:34


Once Upon a Time

we were born wrapped in barbed wire

with pain so barbarous and ordinary that its memory

has been repressed by all guilty participants

only to be adequately replaced with brilliant, original

and new pain; the bum on the corner of laguna ave

and echo park that covers himself up to his head

to dull the cold nights, to block the blinding light of pain

or as drunken guatemalans are murdered for holding knives

off union and 6 (while americans, the less-colorful

kind, are honored as patriots for carrying rifles)

and as i pass by, my car’s rack ‘n pinion needing

repairing and/or replacing, and as i try to remember

if i have enough money on my debit card to buy

cat food, wondering if the vons is still open

while my brothers think seriously on joining

the military, or if i will be able to find parking on

sunset blvd, beautiful, tall girls having taken all the spaces

coming from far off places like wisconsin, michigan

alabama; and myself, finding it hard on deciding

to be upset or not about this, each method of coping valid

it has been said, and there is proof, that once

upon a time i used to write about drinking wild

turkey, sex, loading and unloading fedex trailers and a

fashionable, romantic and poetic embrace of apathy

now, as i speak to you and as you hear me

staring at my lips, weighing out the value and

judging the content, i do not mention my father

and the dry, grey doctors manipulative maltreatment

of his back pain, leg pain, sleeplessness, anxiety

prescribing him the newest and most-expensive

most-addictive, higher-profit-margin narcotics

and you will not know that his company is moving to

mexico for a higher-profit-margin wage trade-of

the irony being that the company is leaving

the united states and its underpaid mexican workforce

for a cheaper-still, underpaid foreign mexican workforce

and as you question the art or lack thereof

believing the lie that words are spoken, that poetry

is found in books, on pages, in history, in magazines

on websites; that it’s spoken, sung, said, read, mouthed

recited, regurgitated; i look onto you and the

disillusionment in your eyes is profound and beautiful

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