RUSTED BLOOD

I think I heard this once before
but now I know it is true

My America is bleeding

and I spend my last penny
on cigarette smoke

to smolder the gray desert camels
the charbroiled screams of naked clothing

the visions of napalm fires
flooding Vermont and Quebec syrup

the howling of burning lakes

the immortal ghosts stalking the Appalachian Trail

Heads gone, gonorrhea infected
dogs in their abandoned pits

these unscrambled signals
passed through the Desert Sands

the crystal too sharp

the diamonds too rare

open your pasted eyes

close the CD cover

these words step out

their sentences leaning

the centuries will crush them
the foundation unsettling like the River Rapids

All while trying to erase, suspend

the Oklahoma Dust Bowls
the Kansas Lonely Roads

burning the Nebraska corn to nowhere

which resembles the fires

that spray the oil

which passes invisible, which passes the

semi-bionic fluids

the fluids glowing

the blood rusting nails

that can't support the skeletal walls

and this is America

the bandages soaked

I can no longer plug the arteries

My America Bleeds, Bleeds

and Bleeds

America seems like Death now

and the Blood pouring

on the purple sky
the snow poisoned rocks

reminds me of Anthrax Deserts

and I still think
I have heard this once before

in the dying eyes of America

the dying eyes that wink

at the sight

of rusted blood

Stephan Baley
Copyright 2000