Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com
Thoughts Upon Standing Between the Republican National Convention Barricades, September 2008
this isn't the downtown st. paul i know,
home of handfuls
of partially abandoned buildings,
fair to middling corporations,
sleepy weekend streets,
and kits of pigeons.
no, this is somewhere else entirely,
a nightmare maze
of rusty fences, slabbed concrete,
and near dead silence
the day before
the beginning of the coronation.
i suppose i could go on the sly into gardens,
slice the stems of as many daisies
as i can possibly find,
return to the barricades
and slide them,
one by one
into the slats
to remind us all
of the beauty which springs forth
from the hells we're so prone to creating ...
but somehow
as i stand here
the sun glaring across
these tall, blackened gates,
such peace feels like a dream,
when so many bodies
lie dead in the streets
or are still warm in the ground
here and abroad,
their ghosts floating everywhere,
demanding to be housed
in our still beating hearts.
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