Triage

Put down your forcefield, sugar.
I grew my hair this way for you.
Do you see the skin of which I dreamt?
Torn to and fro, it reveals pools of co-habitation.
Supplies like bread, and soda, and diapers.
I can get these things for you — free-like.

We’ll have a hot time in the old city tonight, sugar.
For which do you care more — bourbon or gin?
Don’t spin your way out of here, not just yet.
I’ve got ways to free us from this island of dark sweat.
The canoe of opportunity, carved for me and you.

This town has never been a finer sculpture of mud and chemicals.
The skies have charmed it free of its alcoholic businessmen.
Let them comb hotel-room carpets looking for lost contact lenses.

We shall take our moldy crown in the throes of lineage, having outlasted
plaided Acadians, discombobulated Americans, and fur-trading French.

Dredge this lake, and you’ll know the ways of a queen.
The Feds, the governors, the mayors:
they hold no quarter for us now.

We don’t stand in line for them.
They stand in lines for us.