Snow Melted

Snow Melted

Kissed a boy once

Who smelled of Marlboros.

He said,

There are people in Japan

Still being born

                                    Sick and deformed

                                                                        Because of Hiroshima.

Went home, re-read

 Sadako.

 Cried again,

 Like in 6^th grade.

 Wanted to write her a letter,

  But what do you say?

Sadako,

when you were born, Hitler was winning.

in my time, they say he lost,

but he didn’t.

bombs are still falling

ethnocentrism still beckons.

You suffered, but in the end you got lucky

because you fell asleep

and I woke up.

X

Made love once

To my best friend.

There was still

Mascara smeared around her eyes

She had washed her face

So hastily

We held each other afterwards

Until in sleep,

We naturally rolled apart

X

There’s a plastic Jesus by the side of the road.

There’s a plastic Jesus by the side of the road

to mark where someone was killed in a car crash.

And all the pine trees around it

seem like giant middle fingers

pointing up towards the sky

X

Never made it too far

With that boy.

I told him I couldn’t stand

The smell of cigarettes.

He told me he couldn’t quit.

I told him I could.

X

Someone was trampled in Walmart

On Black Friday

And a man in Iran lit his wife on fire

Because he said she slept with another man

And politicians in Uganda

Want to slaughter gays

And North Korea

Hates the U.N.

                                    … Remember to always say “please” and “thank you.”

X

Are you and I discussing the same evolution?

            How do Herodotus, Khan, and George Bush Jr. compare?

Can you compare the flesh?

X

Snow melted

              and revealed the grass

  and we reveled

Dirt shifted

                 and revealed the graves

  and we reeled