Harbinger

Harbinger

Razor smiles,

pinched

below cherry noses.

Piled together

as cordwood kids.

Posing for pictures

amidst the din

of kindergarten calliope,

in a room

built for tumbling.

Smiles in forced waves,

goaded,

pleaded for,

by a paunchy,

put out photographer.

Cherub cheeks,

dirty knees,

on future citizens,

denizens,

inhabiters of lives

bestowed.

Huddling, snickering,

a banker to be,

blows his nose,

as the first flash

pops.

Tomorrow’s mother

of six,

hopes her

pigtails will be in focus.

Judgment day soon,

for a squeamish

boy beside her,

portent of sarcoma

will have his place

empty,

when they’re all here

next year.

Fifteen years to go,

rugby shirt,

to the left of dying boy,

will do,

thirty-to life,

for the murder

of his father,

a monster

to his sister.

A future baker

burps,

tasting oatmeal

morning cookies.

A sandwich

on millet,

lies in

a lunch sack of hemp.

Bus driver

in years

to arrive,

dozes near a flag pole,

up most the night,

with cartoons

on TV.

A genius is bored,

behind the kid

by the pole.

Pythagorean theorem,

roils in his head.

While blisters boil

on a prodigy

rapist’s fingers,

singed

in a fire,

ripping his psyche.

There are good futures within

the group, according to societies

engineering with which they will mix. 

Their homes a petri dish

filled with omens of outcome.

Today, a funeral and birth of sorts,

before a camera’s

lens,

today,

in the gym,

a burying of innocence,

since leaving

the womb.

Arteries of right,

intersect

with rivers of wrong.

Frozen forever

on celluloid,

in a box,

on a stand,

placed on a floor

in a room

inside a school

near a town

where a generation

hatched their

eggs

Hayward 02