Stimulus

What I see along the plaza A lusterless milkyway A blackhole of a burntout Gaza On faces fractured by Uranium decay I ask the men Reeled in past my 'stonished face Help my disconnect to ken The ravage of this place. In silence no eye looked up A woman travailed A still birth of grief And quickly looked away. Yet while the line was reeled in still The impaled fluttering fish Caught me in the obsession Of a wish. I asked aloud My desperation rising Like a mushroom cloud Over New Mexico, At the Alamogordo Test Range Eyes met eyes unsocketing Recognition Perhaps some emotional identifcation On this landscape littered With metaphors of fear. We were once the middle class Lured by bait and dream Of white picket fence And something to last And for this we made Required sacrifice Sacrifice of children Where no fire burned Sacrifice of time Bled white of rest On the altar of the wage Sacrifice of worship And any responsibility That served no immediate purpose But a final sterility Where the pale horse And sickle rider Have coralled our depravity. Now there is no corn Nor Joseph here Nothing grows from irrigation Of the salty tear. And then the voice Just failed away Into a void fill silence And some thought Perhaps, I was wringing My hands But instead I Scrubbing them Insistent against the indelible red Felt my throat Grew parcht and dry.