A Supermarket in La Crescenta

Maternity, Paternity, Fraternity waging war
against one another in hydrogenated delirium
commerce collapses like wreaths around small children's necks
in ebbing struggle to strangle all purity
of womb and Bible rooms
Mothers raped by contrived courtesies of smiling, sketched
cartoons writhing in hypnosis
Vegetables taste like skeletal metals and bony scientists
Fruits carry the stench of children who
picked them unripened
as siblings made
hunger pang orchestras
Ads sing in toxic octaves
while the fat and lonesome
catalyze and convulse
in epeleptic agreement
Men, motorized and sterilized
hands still black with motor oil make
the stations of the cross
in front of vehicular
shrines
Dyslexic jazz and velveteen
crooners evict solace
shattering all sanctums in oblivious incessancy
wheeling whining and winding
past great freezers and refrigerators (Arctic Mockeries)
humming deep in ear canals
Highschool droputs mopping the floors again and
again so the flourescent zenith can grin at itself on
linoleum
Magazines command control of
minds, conciousnesses, hearts, genitals but does not care for
souls because everyone gave up trying
40 years ago
Cashiers careful not to tear stitched grins
shriek from dead eyes
And there are a million more franchized Infernos, Abysses
begging of neo-Dantes
While Africa, Asia, Europe laments
of Genocide, Famine, barren fields and
swollen babies they
still cannot boast of Damnation
And Deep in America, deep in
this rotten little suburb
everyone knows it and with
cold clairvoyance
wagers that the sun will not rise tomorrow.