Rhett Butler Was No Suicide Bomber

 

I think of the land

Upon which the sum of America is envisioned––

It cares nothing of the shackles and bolts

That strap the country down.

 

It was here before the really bad mess

Left for somebody else to clean up,

Before anyone had the people

In the palm of their hand.

 

Down at the junkyard,

They got wires crossed in their souls.

People are treated like piñatas.

Everything has been infiltrated by festivals of detainment.

 

The calendar says spring,

But all I see are the flowers of torture.

Their scent is that of feces

From men crowded together like rats.

 

A thousand years from now,

Will they still be running around

Thinking if they died,

The pain might go away?

 

 

4 March 2006

 

 

[Published in Mantra Winds: Poems 2004-2010.

© 2010 by Jim Cohn.]