What Will We Do With Exile?

What will we do with exile 

If  I can’t mime to people strapped into

cars roving and 

foaming at the mouth. 

They eat in the blue light of a drive-through,

shouting at changing lights. 

This place is the greasy bottom of a white bag, 

a cold fry. 

Listen to the impatient roar of  highways

that mowed down trees, 

leaving animals defeated, 

taking nothing on their backs. 

Highways can take you to a gas station,

to another highway. 

Could you speak to heads turned, 

hunched shoulder blades, 

men with Budweisers and nothing to do? 

At bars, the sound of television never finishes.

I can paint you pictures of plastic and metal,

strokes of anger and abandoned malls. You

are made of sounds I can hear, but never

replicate. 

We open oranges at midnight 

on an unmade bed, 

like we were sitting beneath palm trees.

In a dream, I meet you on top of a hill.

You gesture down at the city below,

now living without you. 

Your eyes are watering.

but your chest is dead still. 

I hope to watch your heart

quietly wake at dawn, 

and lower in prayer.