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The Great Sea Yearns

Robert D. Lyons

A body washed up beside the river
In East Saint Louis today,
His head was blown off,
But I imagined he was once
A close friend.
The protesters fill the park downtown
With blackboard picket signs
And pleas of redemption,
And the police,
Dressed tightly in riot gear,
Conduct a symphony of broken bones with their batons
And speeding rubber bullets,
And the tear gas brings rain.
The earth swarms into the room
With the stench of the beheaded,
Of the disappeared,
The living mad,
And the damned.
Penguins are just a ball of sickly oil
Their wings cannot lift,
But tempted with air
And the mocking sky
Every waking moment,
Only to plunge fatigued into the water
And drown.
The sun rising
Is just another dirty trick by god.
The cigarette ash
Evaporates into the air,
And the phone rings in silence.
As the semis pass,
They shake the foundation of the house
And the frames from their mantels.
Two more bodies float down the Mississippi
And into the sun.
Men murdered for no reason.
I’ve seen men killed over tennis shoes,
Over a jacket,
Over a brick of junk,
Over five dollars,
Over a whore.
The worst men have the best jobs,
And the best men have the worst jobs,
Or are unemployed,
Or starving,
Or rotting in a smirking madhouse.
We have one package of instant noodles left,
And the dehumidifier hums
As we smoke our cigarettes
Bellow the cracked window in the corner,
We listen to the sound of sirens seizure in through the window,
As the police go from hood to hood
Shooting,
Jailing,
Beating,
Stabbing,
Blinding,
And raping good people,
But we have done this to ourselves.
We deserve this.
The sun has become aghast with waiting.
Our hearts have given up on us,
And we will be left to rot
In a sea of dead plants,
Wired thorns and sticks shriveling in a windless sky.
Somehow,
I’m glad we’re through.
Maybe we don’t deserve to be saved,
Maybe we just deserve to be entertained.
The absence of art has dealt its blow,
The war has dealt his while smiling,
Decayed love evaporates us with the stale wind,
The way we lived each day
Like the next were
Infinity.
When the bombs finally roll in
Like chariots,
I don’t care what they do.
We’ve already killed ourselves
Each day we get out of bed.
So I keep smoking my cigarette.
I take a deep drag,
And hold it there in my blackened lungs
As I hear more shooting in the streets,
And wait without
Wonder.

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