There’s a piÑata demanding destruction,
a painting in the louver crying for a slice:
good old American pie and sobbing
for a time when dying was proud,
before the diapers,
the drugs, the machines,
before the Ordained Murderists
of the First Church of War
made dying into the laughing stock
of life, rolling on the floor hysterical,
at our tourist stupidity
ripped off on Grandiosity:
only some of our parents
believed the Dream a con
but they were deep
in the dream of love
and still counted out their pennies
saved from the landlords
and paid the man for ownership
of a bridge to Brooklyn
or a trip to California.
screaming at low volumes
