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.