The 21-year-olds look so very tired.
They’re ready to get married.
They’re willing to make their money under the table.

The babies in town think they’ll never have to beg
for an early June to be so perfect. Ninth grade took forever,
the summer will drag out where appropriate,
and tenth grade will leave anyone over thirty
scrambling to wash the grey out of their hair.

It’s hard, man.
People trying to shame the stars and airplanes into isolation
with all the bottles and cans they add to the recycling.
Rebels in some rock and roll world tour souvenir from the 90’s
are still writing in notebooks that have been built to endure shaky ideas.

The babies don’t understand what in the hell
six or seven thousand people in this town are doing.

But they dig that one in fifty will buy them cigarettes.
They like that one in 100 will get out of the bar,
stare at them because they’re as good as anything else
for pulling a little focus together,
and stay upright long enough to buy them warm tall boys.

They go out to that point in the desert
where they used to sit in the old cars,
and wonder if any robots or space aliens
were buried in the debris waiting for progress
to shove it down even further into the earth.

They drink every time the sky flickers
like a malnourished light source.

They avoid the smallest details that stalk the lonely history
you can find in all the old factories.

Laugh about abstinence-only sex-education,
fall in love, consider lust for the rest of the weekend,
and make plans to burn down every church in the area.

Because no one takes really interesting pictures anymore,
and somebody ought to at least pretend to care
about creating a revolution out of just trying to fill the time.

04/23/2013

Posted on 04/23/2013
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