Love's Whisper cradles the dawn and stars glitter the canvas of tomorrow
Blue notes sail across the ocean
And leave behind tears of pain and sorrow
The blush of Summer dapples her eye
While Picasso's warmth paints the Sky
Flames of pink copper and grey
Streak the horizon as dusk turns to day
The sonnet of love locked in her soul
More potent then poison more precious than gold
The songbird of youth carries her dreams
Through sun and rain and Autumn's leaves
And when the thread of night appears
His lullaby holds her near
But then the ambush of silver lies
Cupid's Arrow bastardised!
Wisdom truth and all Earth's blame
Stamp her cheek with crimson shame
Like roses that have lost their bloom
Love is always gone too soon.
-
Ketchup Kid (Inspired by Child Poverty in Vegas and the BBC Panorama Documentary )
Her day was punched with silence
And hand me down promises
Only ten summers blushed and already her dreams are splintered with hate
Through the filmy curtain of her left eye
There is a coral ring of sadness it weeps across the school room desk
And scoops her into the arms of misery.
She ate cooked rat on Sunday
Her mamma told her it would be okay but the scabby hump in her intestines had already made her puke three times :
Yellow chunks of phlegm glutting her tender craw.
In the canteen she copied Bernadette and jammed 15 free ketchup sachets into her pocket .
She would mix it up later add hot water and let her stomach rest a bit they called it hill billy consommé .It left a sweetened trail of squalor in her mouth.
Home was a burnt out Lincoln she was meant to be in Heaven with her Barbie doll Casey J, just another ghetto abortion statistic bloodying the sidewalk but her mamma had changed her mind.
Mr.Weezer let them use the trailer to wash up in exchange for favours and creepy dress up games.
He had a golf ball size cyst on his cheek she wanted to jab. His breath smelt stale like warm beer pooled with cigarette buts and lard. His lips were greased with evil.
She would sit alone at Recess rocking herself to sleep the chairs were comfy and she avoided the fishbowl stares all the other kids hurled her way.
She had a make believe castle decked with pink balloons and Minnie Mouse dresses spotted with candy balls of glitter.
Her one friend Ellen got taken away by child services. Ellen was always capped with bruises on her arms her back and worse her eyes which were veined purple and green like trailing snap dragon. She missed her goofy laugh and the way she drew white unicorns always with indigo blue eyes.
More than anything she dreamt of a real dinner not pop top beeferoni but a sit down meal with soda and a Christmas tree.
On Fridays she got her weekend snack pack from school but that didn't stop her festering need for normality. She is the canker sore of a fractured canvas a shameful scar on the landscape of red white and blue , the banner hatred of the poor.
Is that the triumphant call of those stars and stripes that blister the tinsel beauty of the lonely Vegas night.