Indian Mortgage Poem by John Courtney

Each time they asked for money I gave them what I had and took small hesitant steps backward to the place of my original freedom. One day from there I might watch with my original mother and cold sweating lemonade in a field of poppies leaning gently on the blue eye as bloated demons race aimlessly from godless vaults. Bats disturbed awake from the mind's cavernous and seedy motel, wingless and with nowhere to land. They might be fireworks on the surface of the sun unable to scream for help; astronauts quickly losing oxygen on long journeys to inner space. In spiritual explosion might remember the young faces they took for fools and traded soil for bombs. They might one day be no longer confused by the bankrupt smiler and God might pour another glass of free lemonade from her private stock for those of us greedless angels treasuring only the golden diamonds of our hearts. They might watch righteous lovers as we watch the mansions spark and begin to bleed, bleed and begin to burn. Their smoke might swallow our lungs and their hospitals might carry us home. The cheap wooden beams that hold up the voice might collapse around our names. Our names might rise from their signatures and drive the fire across a stolen prairie. We might smile and begin to die, die and begin to smile.