Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Cars And Trucks (revised)

Cars And Trucks (2017) revised

I am not gay in your world, but gay enough.
I am not black, either. Yet, black
Wherever I roam without you.
I am not an immigrant but a stranger
In an even stranger land,
Watching their cries like infants —
         Helpless little babies I refused be,
         Since I grew up, took my medicine.
         Gut full of the stuff soothes what rumbles within.

If I am not right
Or left, I am wrong           and alone,
Watching beer-guzzling hunters haul
Bloody trophies on trucks like freedom --
Mud on oversized tires, bedazzled grilles,
With tow hooks, pulling tiny, two-wheel drive cars
From ditches in dark blizzards.
         The babies drive off with meager thanks
         And expressions of shame.

I go home to the goth girl,
Attracted to friends who daily reject her —
Shaves her head, pumps that brain
With Korean anime, K-Pop and rants repression:
From schoolwork to plight of LBGTQ.
         Thirteen-year-old, newly professed,
         Bisexual transsexual, with lips and face
preparing even more metal piercing
Than tender kisses of lost innocence.

         Her His brother -- tall, brilliant,
Master of piano, brass instruments,
Tops state ranks in testing:
Math, English and Science.
In dark, befouls basement couch,
head strapped, controller aimed
At a glowing, green Xbox.
         Too tired to remember hand in
         Missed assignments, our cause to track…

Two parents who'll be damned these babies
Don’t make the grade, land on feet to struggle
With something akin to virtual reality:
         Our foggy existence, find time to ponder --
Politics? What's this about 2017?
         Are you trying to get me to feel
Something, Mr. President?

Fabric of an already torn, nuclear family tugged.
A tapestry too thin. Must we scrap it,
Create another? And just how
Are we supposed to do that when
Babies bury shiny cars in ditches?
Will the muddy trucks come?
My sensible SUV can't save us.


5.4.22 revised poem
50 lines, free verse

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