Red, White, and Blue
It drips red
From the grand liberation
of limb from limb
The bombs of freedom and bullets of freedom
Red as the face smashed through the glass
Caught in a sudden checkpoint
Red as the thousands
-- can you imagine thousands? --
only collaterally dead
the desert watered
preemptively
It chills white
White as the knuckle-twisting fear
From the rainbow of yellow, orange, red alerts
Is some one of us, somewhere, a traitor?
Better not to make waves
only to freeze
they say that almanacs are suspicious
better to go nowhere, say nothing
only recite the national anthem
with an eye to the neighbors
sung low
It feels blue
The grade school homilies were false
This is not a special country
It really can happen here
Oh, enemies could always kill us
we knew that
but only we could destroy the idea
only we could turn the open sky
to the underside of a Tupperware lid
inside, sealed leftovers
outside, bacteria
Copyright 2004 Rich Puchalsky
E-mail: rpuchalsky@worldnet.att.net
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Last modified: August 19, 02004