Dirt Paradise Poem by Martin Byrne

Hello mongoose of wheat skin
How dead are you?
Floating swaying
In your sea of wind
Topsey Turvey
And weak stemmed
Like a poorly spun dreidel.

Alone in the cabbage patch
of kids
Singular on the land
Where T-Mobile dominates

About two quarters in?
That's fifty cents...
Or three feet into:
Where you came from
Where we all go
Where the wheat sprouts
Where mother nature shouts

Howling in the night
The voice of a million locust
Devouring the chaff
The cabbage patch
Leaving the sprouts
Too small to eat

You are left

Short and abused
Are you okay?
Open your eyes
Stare into the horizon
For the first time
Past the wheat skins
Past the cabbage kids
Soak up the sun
Soil, the possibilities

Grow taller than a
cellphone
Be stronger than
a dreidel
See the horizontal
Misrepresentation of your
future

In time, the mongoose
will eat the snake
The wheat will wilt
The cabbage can cry
The skin will peel
Revealing two quarters
Spinning Topsey Turvey
Letting nature yell