On this day in June

Challenged sickly sweet, law-abiding

Doe-eyed fool, and red tape the ballot vote

with terror dreams;

choose the dancing devil or bleeding heart, 

Neither do anything but pose 

postcards outside clinics and kowtow to false idols; 

Fill hotel lobbies with dry lemon-grass 

Plastic particulates, rights in a glass jar;

Lead them in, show them red, show them blue

while opera burns, drama cascades, 

art as fickle as a can of soup;

name the nameless group you named

behind your facade, 245 years given 

and 457 years taken

Balance that on the sickle, hourglass, abacus

tell those with nothing, thirteen and nothing, 

to relive the red-scared false dreams 

of men embarrassed by what their parents gave, 

to come to sugar plum conclusions

bent so far below the earth

the sky is no longer blue. 

And our hearts beat as seven, but with two; 

I had not made a deal where you have

but set my eyes somewhere new.