beat to hell

I tripped back a step from the curb, I had
stubbed my toe and Lord
did I howl

in that moment I discovered America
sucked from the headline spelled out in headlight blurs
in letters forty miles per hour high

well, why
do our daughters and sons
- smashed into lumpen sums greater than their severed
parts, maybe -
fetishized as always by some pervert -
what cause
do these beaming girls and boys have
to listen
to whispers from the uneasy spirit of their times,
to listen
to unsettling music,
to take
unmeasured steps on over-trod paths,
towards destinations plotted neat as cemeteries
but never satisfactorily mapped,
to take
it all in,
to let it sit. Apparently undigested
and then spit
incomprehensible slogans?

Didn't Their Parents
already prove their parents wrong, and their parents
wrong, and their parents wrong?

And who will prove me wrong?

Has a case already been brought, bought, sold, judged,
awarded a respectable red ribbon prize at the county fair
and was it fair, or was it just
a few days in county
and counting?

The top of my big toe
flaps like a jauntily-cocked hat

I'm going to stand here a minute, and eye that curb
warily
I tell you

that curb
is my America

and somehow I'm going to figure a way over it