The Home

The hardened hearts of the calloused masses

stamping their cards, stampeding the halls,

numb to the blinding pain of their charge,

herding the hurting to dining room troughs.

Lightening quick and slow as molasses,

the ghostly parade of sickly shadows.

Trading visages, and voices, then names

for numbers and figures and diagnoses.

It took half an hour to braid your hair.

The recess bell rang before I began,

and I stayed to comb and weave your locks.

Told you I was the singer in a band.

You played the piano and the violin

when your legs could stand and your fingers bend;

And you left California for the state we’re in

to be a goat farmer with your, now late, husband

Suzanne,

We'll find the heart in everything.

You and me, we are

flecks of gold in the sand

in the bottom of the river bed.

Suzanne,

We’ll never amount to anything--

the dirt in your nails,

the dreams in my head.

I wish I could take you home again,

for home is just around the bend,

Suzanne

—J.Drew 2015

The Six-O'Clock News

In the stable steam rises from the backs of blacks,

and white horses.

sent in seven ships across the ocean, red.

sold to a household of strangers,

to serial killers,

to salesmen of all sorts of devotions.

Saturdays child is safe from school.

Tuesday’s child is full of bullets.

In remembrance of the golden rule,

those she’d never spoken to sobbed,

for the sake of a closed casket,

and the six-O’Clock news

-J.Drew, 1999