"Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind." 

A response to “Dawn’s Highway” from Jim Morrison’s

An American Prayer album (poetry workshop assignment)

MIND CARNAGE

1.      Observation: smudged, gory blood, broken bones, torn flesh

2.      Smeared like an abstract painting all over highway

3.      Contrasted with desert backdrop of beiges & greys

4.      Family, out for a Sunday drive

5.      Child witness: youthful impressions

6.      Fragile, vulnerable with no context

7.      Adults do not explain

8.      Drive on, unable to communicate the horror

9.      The gore is branded on the young mind forever

10.   Egg shell of protection, not just cracked

11.   But, shattered

12.   Parents not knowing what to say or do

13.   Change the subject

14.   Child, stunned-hears no more

15.   The day is soon forgotten by parents]

16.   Not so, the little boy

17.   Reality sucks!

18.   Parents do the best they can

19.   Is it ever enough?

20.   Essentially, each soul is on its own

21.   To learn its own curriculum

22.   To press to hard

23.   Would obliterate.

RMK June 2015 ©