Myths In Every Moment

I.
It ran like a trip wire taut and thin
across Corinne’s gunked-out teeth,
secret that sent her blanking up against
walls, keeping her mouth well guarded.
But, young women can’t disappear
quick as an exclamation point shrinks
down into a dot! So, she flutter-smiled,
as her lips uncurtained silver surprise
when you made her laugh, worried
her braces somehow signaled attack.
“Wires are for batteries,” she’d say
to her dog Brandy, then hoped again
Astarte might one day rule the world.

II.
In the manner of dust, dirt vague now
in the sky wiping the blue off the plains,
broke loose into town, a hesitant sort
of brown, the terra severed from solid,
roamed like banished shadows refusing
to be underlings to all the life it gave.
“Bad times when that’s what you see
at your bustop...the last of the topsoil,”
thought Chris. In the manner of youth,
unchained from crops, you catch a ride
with the wind, join up with your friends,
and if you want to, you blow this valley
back to desert once again. He’s less
than one year on the job, first one out
of college, and he stands wondering
what did the dirt decide today? How
goes the howling of farmland? What
does a lunar surface, exactly, look like?
Well, son, nothing lasts long in employ,
not even the ground beneath your feet.
We turned everything to zoo rules,
a planet based on refrigerator units
for polar bears. Still, some teenagers
watch dust clouds eager as hunting dogs,
like traffic to the party tonight. Yes!
Unruly up that old horizon! Chaos always
looks like a good place to hide. We never
wanted to be farmers. Sure, it was cash
in the bank, a way out of hunger. But
we can’t build a church that bans our DNA!
Hell! For Chris, It’s just another 7:09. Waiting
on the 7:07 to jump a downtown Indy bus
from Clermont, his head pointed East,
hoping for his ride to show before earth
arrives to enter every orifice, loose upon
a wind, demonic airborne herd of harpies .


III.
Madeleine can’t locate the mute button
for the TV news shooting at her from the gas pump.
The apparent facts today make her feel bad for being
a mother, unable to name the god that doomed us
to die from all our hunger...how we’ll eat everthing.
Her Lycanthrope Yoga revealed the one story
that cannot be told in fear that it’s all too true.
“I’m just going to go,” she thought, always alert
to bad voodoo mucking up odd parts of her day,
unable to name the god of frontier that allowed us
all to leave and leave and leave until we took
his kingdom, now there's no place left to go.
No gas.
No TV news.
We’ll see how far she gets.
We who believe Coyote won’t truly win.