By Beauty Damned

Looking For You

Looking For You
By Maria Carreón

Take a seat here
Ice and vodka slide in glass across
A single, undivided
Slab of wood
One slice down the middle of a massive tree
Rested upon by unbridled troubles
Vexation and
Calamity
We could collect tears in buckets like rainwater
pouring down from a leak in the roof
A napkin from a stack and
A pen from a stranger's pocket
Help to work out the problem
There is a door, but
It can’t lock out the things I have seen

A sidewalk stretches
Down to rocky edges
Of eastern waters
Where my urgent call is
Swept to the other side
On a filthy wind
Boats glide
This island to
That island
Bridges suspend above the choppy waves
Turnpikes and
Expressways
Freeways and
Highways run between
Tollbooths with
Sweet or surly operators
Factories exhaust diabolical jet-streams
Of black smoke and flame
Industrial wastelands fester
A stone’s throw from
Glittering rivers
Hickory, hemlock and ash
Blanket Pennsylvania
Spindled charcoal trees
Like coarse black hair on the
Wintry back of Chicago
Are you out there with the
Motionless cows
Big sky?
Rolling hills and
Apathetic windmills
Hundreds of hotels and motels
Spilling over with
Seedy propositions and
Unconquerable self loathing
Faces of anguish
Faces of bliss
Dreams of mercury and steel
Wishes hinged on dandelion fluff
Various realities that morph with
Each gust of salt out of Utah
Every aggressive wind
From Brooklyn to Santa Monica
Exalts my declarations of grief
Where are you?
In the Colestine Valley
Dipping far below the California Interstate
Tucked beneath the dirt of our childhood
Among the wildflowers and star thistle

Whizzing over
Row after row of corn and wheat
Drifting past a thousand and one clouds
Crossing patches of ice
Tumbling in tunnels of dust
Living among the stars

[Copyright 2007]