Benjamin Henry

My Sister's House

I sit on the couch in my
sister's living room and realize:
she is still six years older than me,
weaned from my parents earlier,
some mistakes they'll never make again

my mother thinks as
she plans my future and
asks me what I want to do
with my life and what will
make me happy and all the responsibilities
I have to make and pay for
and plan for and look forward to
what?

                What lies ahead of tomorrow
in a society I alienate myself from
I know because it tries so damn hard
to take me in and make me happy
and rich but all I can see
is ambivalence and ignorance and I know
that they are just words and

I make myself unhappy
with these thoughts that come from
who knows where, maybe something
bad from the Bible or that
Rock Music dope dealing Pink Floyd
kids that will ruin this country
and everything it is and stands for
our children to grow up and appreciate
is all ruined because these damn kids

go out and look and see
what is really there,
even though our every day
practiced have a nice days,
now who could beat that?
Even the glorious technology,
a gift from the brilliant minds
of Our Generation put to waste
by troublemakers and perverts and MTV --

long-haired lunatics taking up too
much time between Our commercials
that clearly show them how life
should really be, let's forget
the pornography of Christ in Piss
and homosexuality and marijuana
because we know it's wrong --
how can we call that art
when America is really Norman Rockwell,
-- I know it's true it was
never that way when I was young.

A college kid on state
financial-aid,
I sleep in a bunked bed
and look out a window
at carefully manicured lawns
and stone fences and rows
of cars and buildings being
built and potholes in roads
fixed and a recycled garbage
dumpster.

Is this America, I ask;
it must be it says on the map
and the tv that sits in the corner:
I watched Dan Rather for five years
every night he told me America
was something else, like
Miami Vice and Tom Sellek
with guns and sports cars
racing in paradise.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The window glow yellow from streetlamps
casting shadowed squares on her
glass coffee table;
I fall asleep
in my sister's foreign home.