Safety Scissors

He walked through a door into the unknown

Where the trees shine like compact bone in a russet-crested

sunset

And the paper moon folds so many ways before tearing

Where men live on houses with chicken’s feet and teetering

stilts

Just so when they teeter and fall they find themselves closer to

god.

 

Words are made of colorful paper ring banners strung around the pillars of cut-out idealisms

And their fables are blown and spun into glass menageries kept on permanent display

At the wax museum

 

Where history is painted over by clowns in blue overalls

Who use newspaper matches to light their cancer sticks

To reduce their carbon footprint

 

Years are marked by the dirty laundry carted out of dead children’s homes

Where the mother weeps casually

Wondering when the insurance check will come

So she can continue her crystal worship

 

Law is no longer a word

Prisons have emptied to become movie theatres

Selling cotton-candy pictures of lives prior

And lawyers who clean out the bathrooms

Trying not to see their broken egos in the waxed-floor tiles

 

Through this journey

His finds only threads of patriot coats

And he exits