Today Bobby already ate his oats.

---Already ate my oats Moms...

And then out into the Phoenix beauty
alive, digging thru the trashcans
like a ravenous animal, searching
through the textbooks of the living,
down to the cinemas
and the crackhouses on Camelback...
I wait for school to start
and the pavement to sun, festering.

We've landed a man on the moon
but the streets are still sparse,
there's still scavengers starving,
still sickened suburbs, all wilting,
and wretched Phoenix, my bosom,
the world's armpit, it's still here, ageless,
it beckons me like a salt'd lover...
Off to class.

The teachers, they're all alcoholic breath
and nostalgia, big stuff happened
when they were alive. But what's happening
now...recuperation, Iraq's over,
time to play puppets...a decade to forget.
Left in the dust, growing up staring
into the blank, dreary eye
of an iPhone...

And none of us will know what to do
until we're too old to do it.