the child

O wide awake in America, big sky highway hollowing out the ears predawn, cut me like a cookie and may i taste good too, share myself with you and you and you, sweet sugar has me processed in dreams and tumbled out a foamy bed into my own personal despair, sliding down the inner sanctuary of a question mark to collect and drop whole you made of me, sweet sugary period, plastic in my blood, pharmaceuticals in my water, disaster strikes and i lick my lips like you and smile, but no one smiles like we do, upside down or kinda flat, tethered to the mobile phones we kill by our deep sleep, counting ringtones like sheep, shearing and swiping the hell out of an alphabet, on a jazz or classical base as the temperature begins to rise with the sun, another day washing dishes and dusting and cutting boxes the perfect size to ship my ass away to some infernal packaging depot to be fitted with my personal bar code, my very own, which is linear and bold, impervious to black mould, scanned or so I'm told, taped then situated in some draughty unremarkable corner in the cellar of a warehouse to grow old. All i know is no one can erase me even if they try, I am forever etched into your hard drive, America, no matter how the cleaners cleanse, efforts to coat me over bleach me out only leave my prominent lines bubbling up from the cracks and surfacing again with all the gasses, grilling the faces of the masses ordering me around, yet still i stay aloft in my dissociated safe place way up high, finding me in a cut up creatively commoned place looking down, streaming on your horizon, only the light protects us now in our projections. Back out where I belong, some ionic bond, trashing your paint job with my spraypainted flare, exposing your destination to the going nowhere, breaking out the bars when i decode the code, fingering you with my fingerprint, America, until you see your own stars and go black and white again, from Birmingham to Ferguson, up the checker board and Martin Luther King you at the end, redoubled on a chance, green felt absorbs your glance in a healthy tribal casino where all the bad blood is blue, you see, the karmic knot we work it out, massage it real well, strike it with needles until you finally falter, sweet vulnerable America shedding your suit, crying and opening like that before the seamstress. And my lines are out of order, spinning into circular pools fallen stars, and the many shades of blue wash over me and you, when the world forgives and finds a place in the heart for a renewable source, because somehow you were always meant to be pleasant on the eyes, America, and generous though talkative and combative perhaps, you wear out your welcome in a superfluous way, and everyone has a good laugh and pats you on the head, for you are the child and loved just the same. Back to bed now with prayers, and we will see you in the morning, the rubbing of eyes, tumbling down stairs in your nightgown, little one, big sky highway musculature, heavy with some imagined purpose, dreams of carbon and oxygen and coffee churning blue to black in post industrial aftermath, shining oily head to toe, shedding another skin, inspiring us with your renewals. I will be there, my love, somewhere in the corners of your eyes, sucking on Maybelline, about to exit the glistening curve and drop unseen into your wilderness... where i have always belonged.