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 horror
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
So 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
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
So anything to dull the pain
Of a self-inflicted, crippling lotus gait