I

She sees a road & the dog death comes;
Love at school and some have tried.
A rare breed and the atom bomb.
A blue tree and the night is long.
Or not, the divided ice-cream bed –
Summers un-forgotten; a rocket to the stars.
Plebes in the grid. Before the empires bled.
Us, and the walls, and where we go.
She sees herself in the Great Divide.
Atom bomb and a sense of pride.

Rush, summer streams, cars that smile;
Stuffed closets full; history, hate.
World’s forests and highways of death.
Sounds numbing the purple towns’ regrets.
Zephyrs of wasted time. A crumpled vow.
Perpetuity’s vibration becoming Now.
Insanity. Mortal looks, breathtaking tapestry.
Unfettered commerce, animal wails.
Love “back there”, “in here”, future swarms.
He’d die for anyone, but would not say:
“A sickle for your wrinkled eyes.”

II

Blood of the holy virgin; nape of her untouched neck;
Slaves, holidays, revolts, marketplaces.
The gentle stream of her stare; meaning bleeding out, too.
“That empire never ended”; those days I walked with you.
A golden irony orbiting my heart as the talking screen
Walks me through history; As a tapestry of passions squawks
through my radar in the hideous night; and again, on these
Spectral trails, where a jackrabbit’s heart has more true
Industry than this entire nation – I speak to the departed
and perfect my soliloquy. A ranger of deathless flights
of seeming, and this nation which I’ve too long romanced,
I fix my soul’s eyes now upon a future spent abroad,
recalling warily a time when I, under a heavy spell,
Loved her beating heart.