a model on a billboard

she looked like fried chicken still wearing its feathers
like a twinkle to what will be a father's eye
somewhere someone's belly rumbles for white meat
ground down and reconstituted into shapes we've been taught to call
nuggets
she looks like a she has a secret but
the bird don't know no better
and neither do we

oncoming day we'll travel north
looking for better weather
as the south falls into the sea

harry and jim were brothers
owners of an art store
and jim supposed that he and harry had at least twenty good years left in them
but he was a little apprehensive as to what those years may bring
when even now a half-million paper dollars can't even get you a bit of
window space on the mid-town strip
and dictators take pictures with pink babies
that are coming into the world they saw put together
from the fields of the one-sided war
the windmill that took it out of the kids of the sixties

they kiss their children goodnight
and in their sweetest dreams
their good nurture
will have theirs
grow
to
be
The Great Architects of
a new free world

and everyone is so sure god has gone missing
and the song on his lips is silence is

beautiful

and we dig in the dirt like kids looking for china
and anytime something shines in the mud we're convinced
that it's meaningful
and i feel like i never realized it was all a joke and no matter how much you dig you're never going to get to asia
and when i'm old i'll drink tea in the west humming the songs of the east and someone younger will wonder about the motion of a young girl's body
were the picture to break its static moorings and
become a part of the world