Please Don't Vote Poem by John Courtney

Nice big wings to follow children
short distances down the hall
until they blend into sorrow
like turn signals in daylight

prettier pain in the second grade
salvation flying off with the second eye
delivered to girls who outlast boys
chauffeured black dress after black dress
in regurgitated rains buying ripples
to hunt through medicine cabinets
able to stare again into the heart
where blood boils for rotten cows
and liquid cannibals speed off
to crash behind the daily bread
of milk-drunk bedroom doors

flowers wanted to walk too
like babies or grow small enough
to look into the keyholes of trees
where camp light told of doves
that should be buried in pillows
but anchored by such winter church
saw no mascara in fields of cotton stems

Tiny little rings to follow women
searching the mind with lipstick light
claiming no thoughts of the deep sea
like killers on first bicycles pushed
from the mouths of mothers & fathers

men brushed their teeth and hung
resurrection on conceded necks
while others found a smoker's cough
bringing mirrors of wood to termites
hitched in the speaking soil of war
and speaking of war stop sign blood
stuck to the back of political stickers
taking children from cartoon forests
teaching them to laugh at rabbits
they once loved as they loaded rifles
on fallen branches that were pictures
of eyes who got tired of walking
realizing that perfect teeth
have nothing to say

old men wanted to walk again
but just sat there staring out of space
hearing coins sharpen their claws
in the washing machines of youth
where pendulums were taught
the fullness of circles

old women stole sugar packets
and half-eaten club sandwiches
from the purses of lonely diners
that they'd been followed to
for as long as I could remember

I just sat there too
on a bench outside the supermarket
where I taught myself to smoke
and watched autumn leaves
jump from the second tower

red and brown and yellow men
who knew those leaves
red and brown and yellow
were as close to gold
as we were meant to get

I was eighteen years old
and would never walk again