Somehow it’s a battlefield;

Trenches line the ground

Barbed wire words around

Mustard-gas ideas float down.

What’s left of us-

Is it the shards of ego that litter

The no-man’s lands

Or the misshapen identities

That are our prizes?



A certainty is:

No history was written on

These blank canvas walls.

If we’re erased

who will ever

prove we were here?



Maybe there’s a little too much optimism

but I see

A boy with an electrical baton

A girl writing from her elbow’s inkwells.

They make my stomach roil with

The colors that churn inside me:

blue green purple black red red RED

And those canvas walls

Seem to shudder with anticipation.