The scarlet apocalypse of lipstick azalea
Scars the gray-green graveyard, the only color
This lint-covered spring.
After awhile I start to take it personally
These days without sun,
The waiting for the paint on the visible to dry
To unveil again the elves, gnomes and fairies
And a channeled wiccan wind to blow
Like a chanteuse seduction
Instead of these
Woodpeckers clanging the eaves
Or the vengeful God of Science
With a logic born from chaos
Who blows imagined lives out of his breath
And assures us we can believe in anything
Whatever helps to cultivate the chemical of joy
But, at the end of the day, his equation resolves
To the null set of total annihilation.
The Gods here died too long ago,
They were no longer expedient,
They no longer had the power to shock.
These people on the Hudson, these people of the mind
Admire the granite walls and mourn their rising
Convinced that they are made of something actual
Not just their thought.
Human nature, infecting
All they touch, replaces an abundant world
By saying nothing is beyond it.
So here they stay
Within the fog, noting weakness and calling it wit,
Displaying knowledge like an aperitif
Best served to just oneself.
A splash of sun
And the graffiti comes back to life.
The chatter all around, that makes of people
Confessor priests, goes on
Because there never is a truth that stays,
The whole leaks through in every chiding
Of the neighbors, schools, assembly halls,
Enough to fill the sumac leaves
With something more than grief.
