1.
Lazing on my back shade-bathing
under the twinkling skirts of a Norway Spruce
on a blazing, unbreatheable day in August.
A vast, empty cathedral,
cool, and dark and silent as stone,
no rituals, no commandments, no Book,
there under the the floating buttresses
and the high groined ceilings,
I arrive at the place
where thoughts and dreams,
forgetting to be this or that,
play indistinguishably in the gloaming.
2.
A flare of sunlight,
out as soon as seen.
another there, there,
and slipping under, crashing through
the pendant shadows,
muttering, malodorous, en masse,
everything I almost said but didn’t,
that never made it past my teeth
out to the land of the living.
You wanted us, we wanted to help,
we would have set you free,
you sewed our lips together,
you buried us in the brainstem,
your cave of roars and groans, sobs, hilarity,
millennia before a human word was spoken.
3.
At which point the press shows up
with mics on booms, go-pros
coolers of soda and beer, satellite trucks
make-up artists and lawn chairs.
Geraldo Rivera, mustachioed,
peering down at me, supine,
recaps the accusation,
illustrating with examples.
Mr. Nelson, do you have any regrets?
Any justifications, alibis, mitigating circumstances, etc. we haven't heard yet?
America needs an answer,
now’s your chance.
