In Retrospect

I picture them under a bridge,

A graffiti backdrop, stepping over shell casings,

Puddles, discarded lip synced poetry, silent

Long winded echoed over the social media landscape,

Pausing in passion, not to breathe,

No.

...to feel, to notice the wind

Passing through tiny hairs,

Where your arms should be,

And were once, but weakened

In the near act of painting,

Yet not quite painting

And still the poets know, still

Their poetry rhymes of politics, of beauty,

But to you, only sound bites, and I

Want to cry, and scream some sense into-

But, W-W-Where?

The pontiff lay stiff in overdosed

Sunsets, framed in marijuana clouds

Wake up, covered in dirt,

Lathered in dried earth, the residue of

the poetry, or the longing to

See you inherit, finally a sense of-

Bu-Bu-Beauty.

And in the trees your millennial's were singing,

And I couldn’t make out what they were-

Missing behind their Instagram eyes,

Screaming concentrated, and recurrent

Protests demanding campaign tears,

While manufactured streets decline,

beneath bald motorcade tires,

The song gradually became clearer

As those same buried artisans peeled

Layers of their fabricated art, as seen

Through the eyes of you, long winded, echoed-

A forgotten aesthetics planted behind

Your dead panned Pinterest eyes-

Where blurred visions of artisans,

With a graffiti backdrop,

Told stories of a time you mock, hidden behind

Your trends, outlined, and memorialized,

“But that’s none of my business,”

“One does not simply…” Peel the earth dried,

And cracked from their skin,

Cemented to their fingertips...