Mirage

You're a false rumor of rain, a dream of mist, chimera in the barren dusk
All is rolling millennial dead ocean and you're the mirage in this wasteland.

Each parched grain once the body of living coral, antiquated anemone
Recycled fragments like a snowflake in its perfection
Desiccated to death, incessant scorched wind chiseled skeleton
I look at you never clear-eyed, sick vision stared too long at the sun
Surrounded in sand drifts and you my solitary hallucination

All around are ashes, decomposing dust,
The mummified neighbors and their pets greet us
With their brains and hearts enclosed in porcelain jars
They slave their lives for the construction of communal crypts

I lift my veil under a black moon, black coal lined eyes watch
Stars kiss the dunes in every direction
Waiting for you mirage in the desert, I flourish
Like Narcissus in love with his own watery image
I'm just a brambled Echo calling you across the badlands
Hear my faint psalm in the sand storm

I hum fragrant floret melodies of bubbling brooks of shared date and honey cakes
Mineral waters curing the weariness out of the vagabond

Remove your shroud quench your lifetime thirst
Inside me are lush rainforests temperate and forgiving
I'm a desert flower in bloom among the thorns
Speckled stone circles in holy groves kept secret
Ancient trees taller than pillars still hidden in this open horizon
I'm your intimate oasis in this wilderness
The crescent to your sun

Dirge for Anthony

Out of uniform reach for my hip
Self identify, whip out a badge or weapon, you decide
React in swift self-preservation
Man-child murder the law in its optical organ
Meth wild-eyed  in Texas on a sticky night  with sticky tears
Regret every day in this life sentence.

Parents' circled prayers, incensed swirls reach heaven's gate, not fate that
Restrained the hand of the lyncher, limp dick governer
The highest court rules mercy always
Any other sentence, a disguised decree of partiality

Groan a dirge for Anthony Haynes the cop killer
Kincaid the good cop ever in danger, his kin still hum his requiem
Ruled a capital crime, so stumbled the ignorant child
He's served his time, no societal danger, just too tired to appeal

On death row and nowhere to go but under
Elude the date with the executioner no longer
I pray for your contrite soul, no chance to live the life your mother conceived
To marry, have children with long black eyelashes full of heart, and father intended
Just hope for another judicial review extending
Your dead life in this purgatory cell

A coin in the pinball machine of justice for profit, the cop on the beat,
The black boy drowning
In crystal panic attacks, converging prism sorrows of his ancestors
Throw a pretty penny in the wishing well of vigorous dissent.