Recognize that mask
you wear disguising
despair defining
your life
the “fake it
til you make it”
smile shows
heart courage
trying to break
through
yet you are not
in your own story
Life a foreign
language never
to be learned
tongue can’t wrap
around syllable
sounds like music
forced unwillingly
into mouth.
Invisible
inside the mirror
essential self
not seen
no recognition
no history behind
unknown face
Leaders reach into the magic
hat of history twisting the
rabbit into a pigeon while the
disc-jockey assistant lies, his
hate-filled patter a clear
counterpoint to the act on the stage
.
It takes a generation to
paint the kind of picture an
artist like Hitler prefers: to
mix perfect colors on the
palette of politics,
layer canvas with deft
invocation of race,
surround it with a gilded
economic frame, and
hang it in a gallery of fear, where
heroic Wagner is background to
cocktails and conversation of
Midas and his uniformed friends.
*With thanks and apology to The Beatles
Artist’s gallery on
Spanish Land Grant
‘bought for a song’
her mosaics haphazard
stone, tile, shell,
shards of ancient
pottery, pieced:
forming portraits, landscapes,
fetish frogs.
Others’ matted photographs
lightening arced through
purple sky to
red Laguna mesas.
Petroglyph symbols
copied on pueblo
sandstone, vibrant
primary green, yellow
stolen from
reservation rainbow.
Vibrations of road
still thrum through
muscle eardrums
one hundred miles
on old Route 66
faded neon
peeling painted letters
stranded signs
standing tall above
decayed buildings
desiccated autos
washboard road meandering
over under I 40
knitting new and old
