For the country kids.

*****

Recorded Reading (1:52): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/uripbqrt3803uth1il95m/No-Growing-Things.mp3?rlkey=rtwvxqn0xph7xovh77mewsj1s&dl=0

*****

No Growing Things

I imagine that it’s true
If you’d grown up herearound
Not too much excitement
In these trees and hills be found

Your blood is wild and restless
It pumps enthusiastic’lly
Instead, it’s what’s in all those ads
On media you want to see

Full of shiny surfaces
Sungloss laden lip
Jolly urban circuses
And streetwise machos seeming hip

It takes somebody like myself
Has gone there and come back
To turn you on to what it’s
Actually like in fact

Those machos are but insecure
And overgrown boys
Have given up most all of life’s
Ordinary joys

They’ve known so much disaster
It’s like to make them sick
Up close they don’t look so
Damn impervious and slick

They don’t call a makeup man
To touch ’em up before
They pop off looking just as scared
As they really are

Then it isn’t long before
You get a call from jail
Asking whether you are willing
To put up their bail

After which, for nothing but
Helping them that little bit
Your ride, your girl, your job, your home
Take a little hit

Those shiny surfaces don’t shine
Unless they’re under pouring rain
And those sunglossed lips bite back
On a lot of pain

Pain, yes, both received and given
In the rot decay it brings
When you try to go on livin’
Where there are no growing things

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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