We will always love each other

 I am the master and all he needs 

is a gentle Please clean up your room 

and he cleans up his room and 

when I say, Let’s give these Canada geese a chase, 

he becomes the wind.

From his Halloween bucket he offers me treats.

I only take candies I know he doesn't like 

and he says: 

 

We will always love each other because 

we don’t like the same things. 

Of that boy there is nothing now. 

Not a hair of him, not a finger print, no forensics. 

Just photos and diary notes 

remain as my proof 

to the cops he was really here.

 

All of him carried away with his small teeth 

by the Fairy in her talons. 

And then a bold freed slave appears at the door.

Bushy and tall, demanding his rights, some appalling.

So sudden. This manhood. As sudden

as the strike of a match.

It takes a while to recover from a death, 

from grief. 

 

But I do. 

Already he redecorates the bedroom

and uses his unmade bed for a hamper. 

Yesterday I say, Welcome to my home. 

It was starting to get lonely.

Breaking News: Kroger to buy Albertsons

Another merger, just as the prophet 

     Marx predicted.

Capital never sleeps. 

     In continuous motion

to suck all that its forked 

     and flicking tongue 

can reach in its craving to beceome

     multinational, multi-planet--

all-dominant universes —Black Holes.

     (Let's give them names--Walmart. Chevron. Disney.)

And we the ruined shops and souls 

     are their fuel.

And we are the stars that twitch then

    vanish over their event horizons, 

torn into invisible bits

    where once we were whole beings 

who created all manner of gods and angels 

     to save us from all manner of hells 

but who are helpless before a force

    that swallows light itself.

All my life, the numbers who suffer grow

Nor can the little ones escape.

In fact theirs will be worse:

the climate will sweep away their bodies 

like wind sweeps up the sage brush

but still they angle for jobs that will kill them. 

The lettuce fields, Quick Stops, 

the meat packers and

old secretaries and truckers with bad backs

and huge co-pays 

who cannot retire, 

and again 

railroad workers are told, 

Sorry, no sick leave! 

Those are the rules. 

And so they all wait for another 

planet to roll by

or maybe Heaven.

All my life, the world makes 

more and more of those 

who sleep in bunks, who will never own, 

whose lives must fit beneath a tarp. 

Not enough to go around.   

Not enough baby formula.  

Not enough insulin.

Not enough warm coats.

Not enough schools without broken windows.  

Not enough. Not enough.

Just little fixes that don’t fix.  

A high-interest loan, food stamps,

and reminders to say

thank you, Pfizer,

thank you, Elon

thank you for not taking everything,

for leaving the cheap couch

from China, this hand gun,

the crystal meth, 

this last frozen pizza.

Thank you for sharing the air.