Channeling

I see the minds and bodies of my generation war-torn, ragged, twisted, spun - all crank and crack-cocaine eyes - dragging their feet and spirits behind them like rags over the blood, urine, and sweat stained streets of here

of now -

these streets, these apathy-spent broken-dream boulevards so casually ignored by arrogant faith and militant worship of the American Illusion.

I see their todays bought and sold and their tomorrows already spent by the hands and words of self-anointed pharaohs that froth falsity from well-fed lips, that father bastard children who slowly sold their souls for semblances of security and sanity and scrawled "Do anything for money" on the back of dirty bookstore business cards; 

Who, after being exiled again, and again, stumbled through Ventura Avenue, through speech mush-mouthed by methadone, returned to Taco Flat defeated and shamed, eyes filled with yearning and jaundice and hep and hillbilly heroin after seeking nicotine and pocket change from high rollers listlessly smoking cigarettes from a casino balcony aside;

Who stood on highway embankments, waved signs, begged for malt liquor escapes before sifting through dumpsters for aluminum can coins and plastic bottle pennies, and settled finally for restless sleep in Courthouse Park under the dull bus stop lights wrapped in rags and urine soaked sleeping bags

Who, before the badge-clad clean-up crews whisked them away to Kings Canyon for a wristband and a stern chiding lecture, hopelessly waved flags, and cried America, America, to the drone of the dozer and the street-sweeping blitzkrieg;

Who, against the racket of the highway and the humming of streetlights, whispered night terrors of Saigon, of blood cooling within the steaming jungles, of phantom limbs, of brethren splayed over the sand, and of Charlie screaming righteous profanity in twisted tongues

Who still fight these wars - their own wars - long after they have fought ours, and, as they bleed sanity from ears stripped of skin by the wailing winds of the desolate desert Babylon, are released to return home - left to walk class-war-weathered streets unarmed,
unprepared
unaccounted for.