Featured Poem 8/27/08
DESCENT
Tolerant of excess, they sleep among
spilled wine and filthy water pipes.
In the corner behind the side boy
a cigarette paper dries and crumbles,
making the last holy jazz record in Amerika
skip.
Freed from love, they wake to windows
opened by strangers with Bolshevik bricks.
They stumble over Ginsberg and cardboard
sticky with cornmeal and conversation
whispered among free men as Amerika
waits.
On the corner they gather shyly
around coffee and shallow disdain.
While rockets descend like razors
and the distant thuds rattle the windows
of the little white man as Amerika
weeps.
—Mitch L'Herault
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