Predictable Atrocity

For Charlottesville

These are the lost boys

pasty faces, crew cuts, pursed little lips

These are the lost boys

who can’t earn

and hardly read

whose mothers drink and fathers flee

who need a hero and a club to belong to.

They spring from these fruited plains

like humid toadstools.

They rise to take their country back

ward.

Back to the hanging tree, the trail of tears,

The St Louis, crammed with 937

hopeful Jews, sent back across the sea,

No room for them

Not here.

These are the lost boys of meth and disappointment

They stain what they touch

Indelibly.

August 14, 2017