that was the year

that was the year we went sleeping and they came back with facism and war and some other bad shit. we slept a re-starting pollution, thirty years gone by. nationhoods, we let them. we let our hair grow long and uncombed as if it made us something while the empire grew, even as it grew nervous. some old guy said it was morning through a shaky head and we slept as they deafened our dirty songs into great smoked quantities. none of us got arrested, but there was a labeled maximum security somewhere. we sold guns for our tax base. laws were passed to pass us by. they set a couple people free and lowered the voting age by eleven million who were all put on the list they made to keep track of their lists. convention halls grew voices, sang “over there, over there”. they monitored our reveries, a listening to silence us. we proved nothing and they proved nothing. we slept blanketed by counter measures of eviction and deportation and other phrases we never quite understood. temporary stats of sky. immigration anti-bodies. a haze of drug dogs and bordered beds. they had attorneys and we had must-see thursdays. trance ambassadors helped us wave white flags and burn our passports. we fell in love with better machines who were infinite in the face of the game. balloons fell from the ceiling. we slept sound-scared in the sound of those machines, almost as bad as the music that played us. they got re-elected so we voted for them. they assigned colors, opened files, numbered our days and we wore buttons. we loved our loser kids, beautiful boys and girls. somehow they never routed us completely, which was how we slept. a third of our lives. where we dressed just like them.

this morning my hair stood straight up on end
it was gone by this afternoon
that’s my current definition of geography

in the city they find birds singing for attention
they used to think it was the confusion of a lit civilization
never morning
never night

the birds are applying to overseas schools
economics
they themselves want to explain why they sing
yet they sit on top of foul poles in baseball stadiums where no one can hear them
surveyors of an indian summer
none of them untitled or homecoming

one of them killed his wife recently
waited for her after work and picked up her purse impulsively where it fell
the bird police found it in his garage, unhidden
he walks now, straight
no distance which can not be turned over
that’s his new definition

picnic benches

halfway to santa cruz my parents sat highway one
or years ago, in north pasadena
L and I sitting under a trellis picturing holes in people we knew
hands like jackets
what did they want us to say to woods
or wood carved scars
in a brain
or my side
go ahead, put your hand in

that night I lost my shoes
ran barefoot bleeding
trying to time the broken white lines in the road
each one a cooler white I wouldn’t remember later
a german shepherd chased me for a couple blocks
ripped my jeans casually
like doctors
who can
who will

before the running I stood on top of the table
swung myself up on the trellis
across the park I saw a couple fucking up against a tree
never telling L what I’d seen
or my parents still sitting there in heavy jackets
waves turning over
facing away from me as I walked towards them
the only ones I own