Lotus Gait

I have this recurring nightmare:

flailing pigeon, her broken feet

frozen solid to the freezing pavement.

I turn away as if I do not see.

I have this childhood memory

of my old man screaming from the driver's seat

to turn away from an unfolding horror,

but he could not undo what I had seen.

We never spoke of it again.

Two more hapless citizens of

the new post-traumatic stress worldwide disorder.

A stockholm syndrome fifth estate,

desperate to batten down the mounting horrors

and shuffle on in a global lotus gait.

Content to marinate in the plasma glow of the

home entertainment prisons we

commune before like dime-store shrines.

Are these but votive lives?

It's a strangled, twisted truss

that shores-up each of us.

Anything to dull the pain

of a splintered lotus gait.

As for me a filigree of psychic police tape

tends to cordon-off the darker scenes.

But the wandering mind stumbles through it

and relives them all eventually.

Pries open wide your eyes and shines a painful light

on the guilt, the fear, the shame.

The courage never came

from the plasma glow of the

home entertainment prisons we

cling to like dime-store shrines.

Are these but votive lives?

Conservative at heart.

A conformist from the start.

A stockholm syndrome fifth estate.

A staggering lotus gait.

It's a strangled, twisted truss

that shores-up each of us.

Anything to dull the pain

of a self-inflicted, crippling lotus gait.