I need to remember this:
They grow their children in a petri dish
Fingernails office park gray
A neat web of bones hung by the interstate
Unwise and unloved
Don’t touch that thing without a latex glove
You know you must remember this:
You can’t stop the Age of Aquarius
Environmentally friendly
Power turbines slash the manatee
Crocodiles rise up from
The basement of your condominium
The whole barrio rests on
A foundation of the leakiest limestone
Not one flamingo scatters free
When the heart’s a gated community
Go home
So cold and alone
I can’t help but think of this:
All these palm trees can’t make one crucifix
So what will I hang my hat on?
A self-inflicted terminal bout of boredom
All of these dregs I pondered on
And not one can’t be fixed by an atom bomb
It doesn’t have to come to that
No, just give it 10 more years
And it’ll all be flat
I had a daydream yesterday
It whispered “evergreen the everglade”
And deep out there one orchid grows
But nobody can reach it but the Seminole
Nobody, no
I’ve got this box of photographs
You can smell the salt air and feel the waves crash
This one shows an Airstream on fire
This one shows a motel in Art Deco style
Here’s a park where people lived
Here’s the building where they taught their kids
This is something they called “Mickey Mouse”
Here’s the front of Ernest Hemingway’s house
I’ve got hundreds more like this
They’re mostly sprawl and mini-malls
And that kind of shit
But they’re memories and so
Like all memories, they go the way of the dodo