Blue Collar

[Makai]

It's different in the high desert,
there's an openness
that clears your cluttered sky
and simplifies your life.

At first you worry
about clothes and makeup;
then the wind takes over
and refuses you a hairdo,
sculpting its own style
wild with freedom.

You stop thinking about how you look
and begin talking in grocery lines;
[any line will do, parking lots too]
by the time you checkout,
the clerk thinks you came in together
and wonders who's paying.
You'll probably never see one another again,
so you just smile...and share a look.

Friends become family, lives entwined,
reliable, and children are shared treasures
desert tanned and tough;
growing sturdy roots, catching lizards,
slathered with sunblock
playing in the chaparral.

My friend Tina's favorite holiday
is the 4th of July.
Her house has the most
fantabulous firework show!
It gets bigger every year
longer, more elaborate;
this year they used a ladder
and man, was it beautiful.

We sit on lawn chairs
in front of her turquoise-blue home,
the air cooled in a soft evening breeze,
and sparklers are held tight
by each grubby little fist.

We remember our own
fairy-tale sparklers,
as we help the young
fire up their magic, then
dunk burnt ones in barreled water.

Anticipating dusk
the scarlet sun sinks,
burrowing down
beneath a red-hawk horizon.

Fountains of lava stars delight,
how divine, dragon tears cry
and universes explode,
going on and on forever.

My sweetheart whispers,
“I want to sing the Star Spangled Banner.”,
grinning and leaning over I joked,
“You first.”

Soon after, they light one called
“The Patriot” and I can't resist,
I began to sing, “Oh say, can you see,
by the dawn's early light...”
Solomon sings with me;
one by one everyone sings,
“...O'er the land of the free
and the home of the brave”.

We are all Americans
together in this moment, loving
our homeland and our families
with free, triumphant hearts.

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's different in the high desert,
there's an openness
that clears your cluttered sky
and simplifies your life.

At first you worry
about clothes and makeup;
then the wind takes over
and refuses you a hairdo,
sculpting its own style
wild with freedom.

You stop thinking about how you look
and begin talking in grocery lines;
[any line will do, parking lots too]
by the time you checkout,
the clerk thinks you came in together
and wonders who's paying.
You'll probably never see one another again,
so you just smile...and share a look.

Friends become family, lives entwined,
reliable, and children are shared treasures
desert tanned and tough;
growing sturdy roots, catching lizards,
slathered with sunblock
playing in the chaparral.

My friend Tina's favorite holiday
is the 4th of July.
Her house has the most
fantabulous firework show!
It gets bigger every year
longer, more elaborate;
this year they used a ladder
and man, was it beautiful.

We sit on lawn chairs
in front of her turquoise-blue home,
the air cooled in a soft evening breeze,
and sparklers are held tight
by each grubby little fist.

We remember our own
fairy-tale sparklers,
as we help the young
fire up their magic, then
dunk burnt ones in barreled water.

Anticipating dusk
the scarlet sun sinks,
burrowing down
beneath a red-hawk horizon.

Fountains of lava stars delight,
how divine, dragon tears cry
and universes explode,
going on and on forever.

My sweetheart whispers,
“I want to sing the Star Spangled Banner.”,
grinning and leaning over I joked,
“You first.”

Soon after, they light one called
“The Patriot” and I can't resist,
I began to sing, “Oh say, can you see,
by the dawn's early light...”
Solomon sings with me;
one by one everyone sings,
“...O'er the land of the free
and the home of the brave”.

We are all Americans
together in this moment, loving
our homeland and our families
with free, triumphant hearts.

After your long absence from the site I'd probably have greeted this with enthusiasm even if you had managed to write tripe!

But this is so far from being tripe! From that most off-hand opening:


It's different in the high desert,
there's an openness
that clears your cluttered sky
and simplifies your life.


you glide, seemingly without changing gears, into the somewhat more personal


At first you worry
about clothes and makeup;
then the wind takes over
and refuses you a hairdo,
sculpting its own style
wild with freedom.


and then fill out the picture, widen it, like the camera moving back from a close-up to a two-shot to a still wider perspective until with



Solomon sings with me;
one by one everyone sings,
“...O'er the land of the free
and the home of the brave”.

We are all Americans
together in this moment, loving
our homeland and our families
with free, triumphant hearts.

you include all of us in this. Indeed, in the sense of this poem, we are all Americans!!!!