The unvarnished truth is all the puzzle I want

Don’t write me of red pretty sunsets—

unless you are roaring the rubicund hue in the sky

is the earth hemorrhaging and you’re cheering it along.

 

Don’t talk to me of red pretty sunsets—

Write me whirling mad poems on a dead kid’s blood-dried bandage.

Write me snarling, blasphemous words on paper stained with shit.

Write me bloody rhymes, word splinters driven hard under manicured nails.

 

Don’t remind me of red pretty sunsets—

unless you’re drunk, enraged, red-livid and frothing mad

at our ubiquitous toxic ignorance.

Copyright Tim Bagwell