I. flight

youngsters leave houses with hydraulic slow-closing doors
never looking back.
beneath layers of paint and plaster,
each renovation buries generational scars.
now mint-evergreen has wasted to polluted gray
but keys are still left in the same places intruders won't suspect.
so many think it'll be a different shade when their blossom comes
but a battered human mind has such little spirit left
like chronically underfunded school systems in slow decay.
cratered paths pooling water and rusted pipes unwet.
many lives will just end up a different room in the same hallway
variations fit their own understanding of reality,
but ultimately this world is a hard pillow
where we must all come every night to rest.
fruits rarely fall far away from their respective trees.

II. mating call

there is a rush to get married
high risk, low speed
pleasant or bad there's a consequence.
cynics often get married,
misanthropes too,
whores unseen in the vacuum of life
at back alley take-out counters,
greasy table for one at corner diners
like many, they still secretly want to.

III. nesting

when unrest wells we bail,
new life in a slightly different terrarium
hoping for another start
till it falls in its same cubical pattern and repeats.
adulthood soon overtakes
when we will tire of uprooting like nomads every time.
one half nailed on the floorboards in surrender
while the other half merges
with the stainless kitchen sink in defeat.
we jumped cliffs in daredevil's flight on rosy days
leaving our folks with boxes of outgrown clothes
soon it will be our cycle and the kids will walk out,
leaving us semi-blinded to sort our own mess.

IV. circle

we paved entire mountains and poisoned streams
salivating in hopes beneath the toxic mud,
are traces of rare earth. lithium.
gold ore the size of a fist.
citrus-flavored tablet, cure to somber death.
now trees combust every summer,
the antarctic glaciers crumble into a slow death fall
lake fishes die by thousands gasping
anguished eyes filled saltwater tears,
floating lifeless half facing ash blanket skies
cursing god for making man. taking life.

justified casualties like many of us in the name
of civilization they say.