Shore

The sun beats down like school yard strikes
exchanged between some kids
that no one likes enough to stop
from making marks.
Construction slows on the high school
and the grocery store because the old ones
they’re replacing are so occupied
and surrounded by the devotion of
those breathing in the past.
Still that one man with the eye patch
who has never stopped for anyone
continues spreading mortar over all the walls
where all the halls will soon converge
while we are sleeping in and hoping
for a wake up call.

A pile of smashed acoustic guitars
is all that’s left of an old music room
along with eighth notes on the walls
and stupid posters about
the benefits of music.
Maybe it is possible to learn from these
mistakes that shape the hillsides
we have let die from the inside
now all out against the the towers
we have sculpted there to save us
from the boredom that defines us.

Cumulonimbus over playgrounds
where the only sounds are chains that hold
the swing sets all together and the weather
just gets darker by the hour.
It’s time to find some shelter now
like the gazebos in the clearing past
the mulch beds nothing grows in
but the footprints of the people
taking short cuts to escape the coming
down pour; on this dead shore
where the ocean brings in dead whales
every month or so and never lets them go.