Indifferent Stars In Different Skies

All the stars are out

Guilt free

Conflict free

Galactic Diamonds

I exhale a cirrus cloud

And blow it across the moon

I gaze up at the ripples

And discover I have been swimming in pale water

Thick as cold syrup

My mind is stretched and kneaded like putty

Is this how it feels to be high?

No

I am low

I am just another piece of shit caught in the tread of a well-licked boot

And my neck is crooked

It aches

—Not from looking to the sky—

But from years spent pressed to the ground

Ice

In the air and at my feet

It smells pure,

But that is a lie

It claims it is blameless

But here, ice is just one more evil

I know if I were to scratch away those crystals

I would find rust under every surface

There are red stains all across this Land of the Free

Iron dusts

And not-so-ancient bones

Hastily buried

Wilfully forgotten

But

These stains would still be fragrant

If you were to dig them up and sprinkle them with raindrops or teardrops

You would smell it and recoil:

A rancid petrichor

Not from rainfall on thirsty plains, but from a shower on a shallow grave

You’d smell it: a sickly, coppery tang

For all the soil here

Was once saturated

—All the stars are out—

Not just in the sky,

But on the flag too

50 of them

Not conflict free

These are guilty

Blood diamonds

American diamonds

My neck hurts

But I bend it skyward

And I see that the banner is raised

Old Gory

Its threads are ligaments and tendons

Muscle fibers plucked

From the enslaved and the displaced

And woven into a logo of terror

This bloody standard:

“Proudly made in the USA”

Is stamped on wars launched round the world

And it is stamped on the bombs dropped on schools for girls

And it is stamped

On the politicians who sacrifice children

For some arbitrary

Measure of dollars…

All the stars are shimmering now

They begin to run and weep

I am not crying

My eyes are just pricked by the frost

A little water for this last night of winter

Where the cold is sharper than shattered glass

I breath out again

Another cirrus cloud

But my exhale is the only cloud in sight

There is no smoke in this sky

I hear no condemnations

And no apologies

I don’t hear a goddamned thing

Aside from placating prayers and the hiss of a lonely wind

There are no screams here

—neither of children nor of missiles—

Only whispers and a maddening silence

Why can’t I breath in?

***

God told Noah to build an Ark

She won’t tell US Americans to build any such thing

Because this country would rather sink

***

***

***

I left my phone at home during one of my shifts last week.

Ended up writing the first draft of this poem in my head through the day then transferring it to cardboard on my break.

When I got home I tossed the cardboard aside and forgot about it.

But I found it again today, so I decided I should finalize it here on Vocal.

These picture are of literal garbage with some writing on it. But I figure they might at least show some human error, and authenticity in the age of AI.