wants to take flight   to take us over

the mountains   & be them too   capturing

their majesties   the song has ambitions

 

feels born to the purple   but

like prose—sheds grace & amber—

wants to sound plain   so sings in a guise

 

of hymns   amen   wants to rise

in every throat   blend in   be

a paragon of liberty & law

 

masquerade   as a patriot   carry a gun

concealed or not   early on—stern

impassioned   humming

 

freedom’s beat—treads with pilgrims’

shoes   clears the fruited plain of buffalo

of almost everyone   indigenous

 

then chats up white cities   gleaming

the song desires incest with that other song

wants to bear its children   or father them

 

waiting for a god’s blessing   the song wants

all songs to be gendered   wants to act

coy   white with foam   from one sea to the other

 

to shine over prairies   languishing

the way life can after a cataclysm

when mud leaks into everything   enters

 

our houses   drags us out

bares us   then covers our nakedness

as it hardens   roots us   in confusion

 

roots in us   no mud   no lotus

along the banks of ponds   we lie painfully

beautifully   blanketed in mud-coffins   listening

 

with clogged ears   to this sometime hymn

of SUPER BOWLs is played   claiming to be our home

—like any winner   the song wants to own us