Alter of an alternate Reality

​

If I could paint the sound

of a guitar and conjure

the ocean from a cricket’s tear—

then I might believe

in the new math

and self cleaning ovens.

​

If I could balance a toothpick

and two blades of grass on

a half note’s shadow, then

maybe we wouldn’t have to

mortgage the moon.

​

But if you’re alive

and reading this, you know

the weapons of mass destruction

ride in sleek black limousines

washed in orphan’s tears

and detailed by barefoot children

​

of foreclosed homes, while rolled up

windows mirror the emptiness of CEO

souls, sold for glow-in-the-dark profit

shares earned trading oil splattered gulls

and crippled swans for poison trees.

​

If any one of us

could sing the logarithms

of rain, not in the key

of sorrow, maybe the train’s

horn threading the eye of night

wouldn’t break our hearts.