Inaugural Poem
       

America, I haven't slept
in weeks. What is up

with the new airport
and all the rental cars flashing

like explosive devices
counting down to dawn? America,

did you get my text?
This morning I fell

in the shower
and so my soul is sore to touch.

This morning I set fire
to private property;

I rented pornography
from a kiosk painted with shadows.

I recited from
this wretched, busted memory

a dialectical hymn
that goes something like this.

America, don't tell me
it is raining outside

when, really, everything
in this fever dream

is smeared with flop-sweat.
I left my banjo

on a park bench in Chicago
and what I sang

still shivers
in this wintry air

like pig-steel that will last forever.
I grew up on

a dead-end street
where a dappled horse munched on dry grass

behind wood fencing.
To this day,

I imagine the grandiosity of its boredom.
I gave it desiccated apples

from the best part
of my seized-up heart.

I wept for girls, I whispered their names,
I pretended to be lost

inside the buzzing hive of summer.
America, spare me,

would you, this blinding headache
and this sense

that nothing will be again
as it once was. America,

I am not a smart man.
I cannot lie, except later on.

I've failed more than should be allowed.
I confess: once,

I shoplifted from a toy-store
shaped like a castle.

Once, I fed hovering gulls
torn-up bits of bread

as they bobbed and screamed in the salt air.
Once, I witnessed

a man fall from a tree
while he held a chainsaw.

It tore at him
the whole way down.

The grass beneath him was ruined.
America, you

may be asking yourself,
what does this have to do with anything.

You may be full
of acute dread

for all the miles home,
and the darkness, and the whistling of the wind.

America, you know
the words; sing them with me.

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Copyright © 2018 Paul Guest All rights reserved
from Because Everything Is Terrible
Diode Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission