Lotus Gait

I have this recurring nightmare
Flailing pigeon, broken feet
Frozen solid to the freezing pavement
I turn away as if I do not see

I have this childhood memory
Of my old man screaming from the driver's seat
To turn away from an unfolding horror
But he could not undo what I had seen
We never spoke of it again
Two more hapless citizens of

The new post-traumatic stress worldwide disorder
A stockholm syndrome fifth estate
Desperate to batten down the mounting horrors
And shuffle on in a global lotus gait

Content to marinate in the plasma glow of the
Home entertainment prisons we
Commune before like dime-store shrines
Are these but votive lives?

A strangled, twisted truss
That shores up each of us
Anything to dull the pain
Of a splintered lotus gait

As for me a filigree of psychic police tape
Tends to cordon off the darker scenes
But the wandering mind stumbles through it
And relives them all eventually

Pries open wide your eyes and shines a painful light
On the guilt, the fear, the shame
The courage never came
From the plasma glow of the
Home entertainment prisons we
Cling to like dime-store shrines
Are these but votive lives?

Conservative at heart
A conformist from the start
A stockholm syndrome fifth estate
A staggering lotus gait

A strangled, twisted truss
That shores up each of us
Anything to dull the pain
Of a self-inflicted, crippling lotus gait