20 December, 2015

Poem (Draft 2): Fourth Sunday of Advent



On the seventh day we crucify our fathers again.
Whole landscapes of past generations impaled and wasted,
left out to feed our carrion overlords.
In the city and in the town all our best known haunts are dismembered
and the attending memories subject to excruciating mastication
with a sprinkle of Potter’s Field ash
and a dash of an orphaned grandson’s tears for flavor.
This week’s prayers fell shy of their projected outcomes.
The analysts in the front row sell short and exit quickly after the benediction.

By noon we have beatified our mothers –
especially during football season.
Fourth generation redacted anti-feminists replace
mascara with face paint, while the grandmatrons make sandwiches
and mutter sweet incantations against the damnation of their granddaughters.
Commercial breaks sell the wonders of a Central American vacation
while the ghost of Cortez nibbles on what’s left of Zihuantanejo after the fall of Ixtapa.
Eight pesos and an American flag will get you
your very own native bellboy to teach English
and ritually savage in the name of civilization.

By five in the afternoon we seek resurrection in eyes of our children.
Monday means the beginning of Christmas Break
so we will have to continue the fertility sacrifices in January
under the cover of snow and darkness. New year. New tests. Fresh meat.
They show no interest in the old bedtime stories
so we decree and mourn the world’s decay.
Projections for Generation X were high but fell shy.
School counselors retired quickly
and snuck out the back exit hidden in the janitor’s closet
carrying bootlegged bottles of rum and leftover empty promises.
A new prospectus on the up and comers is circulating –
potentially high profit margin, but not without considerable loss.

Oh well. Perverting a mother’s common wisdom,
you can’t make a society without breaking a couple of skulls.
Let them watch the news in case our bedtime stories work better,
and pray we will not be forsaken next Sunday.