Turlock

                nearing the restaurant I hear
                the boys passing
                on bicycles speaking        beautiful Spanish entering
                i see a lot of people
                              not prizing some invisible seed of potential

               eating hamburgers in striped cotton shirts
                                feeders of the world take time enough to care for

themselves dress and wash trim hair
and have
             their teeth maintained with
               sixteen hundred
  dollars every month for whom whole cities are
             created
                           lifestyles forged in broken orchards and
subdivided farms perpetuating the coming blight transformation that
may not be reversed
           their feeding mouths
                                       around me
           swallowing the planet by mistake
                                                   not minimizing my own
             consumption     it becomes clear to me
                                 the most important thing to do is silence advertising
             permanently
             absolutely   totally    and at once

Raven