You arrive at a point where
nothingness seems impossible.
No death in a universe so active,
no tidy dismissal of eternal life when
friction creates its own renewal.

You uncover old shoes,
remembering how painful they were,
not the comfort but the
memory of bodies trampled,
flowers swallowed.

I saw you in those shoes.
I mumbled to whoever was near:
“Greatness has punctured itself.
It spits like a sailor into farthest moons,
hammering on nutshells,
rebounding like pachinko balls among
adolescent mistakes.”

Nobody heard me.
I reported the future with estimable accuracy
but heat continued pouring through America,
running like blood through cavernous ghost towns.
There will be multiple countries made of this nation,
multiple enemies and powerless independences.
All will remember but only for opportunity to
slam arguments into
treacherously bored crawlspaces of
unheroic minds.