A blurring I’d prefer, everyone mixed
or pigmentation changing with moods,
a direct reading, each different,
admiring skin for what it is.
Sensitivity is ontological.
Come share in the study.
I’m not totally tired of loving a world
which hates.
Except sometimes—
Bitterness stitched in lips, sad penance,
hair shirt, albatross-millstone,
relative hurts compounded by blind
pop culture consumption.
Is the diagnosis critical?
Just today, take pain to a jazz fest.
Let the sky open, all saxophone-gold
blowing tones only feeling can see,
reaching a country of calcified drought,
easing the sores of some dust-dying pariah;
holding a plutonium half-life
and showing a fun house mirror
where missing pieces lie amid
wasted, grenades, inherited
mindlessness.
Idealist. Bimbo.
Yes, mockery is tolerable here,
positive energy envisioning age-old evil,
litter, insults begetting the earthly loss
that is savors, then mumbling of indecency.
Yet all day as well, a patchwork of people
on these lawns; neither angels or demons,
only flesh, vibrant, under sun, your corn
rows to my auburn, a wheat field mix
briefly seasoned this minute, fortunate,
as we stretch far from parched
Grey Sparrow Journal 