Dylan Brody is the author of the YA title A Tale of a Hero and The Song of Her Sword and his newest title, the comedic novel Laughs Last. He has also released five CDs—Writ Large, Chronological Disorder, A Twist of the Wit, Brevity, and True Enough: Dylan Brody Live. He recently performed on stage with David Sedaris in Pasadena, CA.

*****

Let Rocks Their Silence Break

This nation is a shining city
on a crumbling hill,
well polished, clean-swept
skyscrapers on fault lines,
elegant architecture reaching
heavenward from cut-corner foundations
riddled with root rot,
tremulous and ripe for liquefaction.

This nation is the beauty of nostalgia,
romantic in a make-believe of memory,
unsightly wrongs committed, bombs dropped
like coins through open fingers,
slaughter and genocide trifles of housekeeping,
dust bunnies all, tucked beneath tapestries
picturesque yarn to illustrate manifest history
as noble destiny woven tight, so dense
no cold light penetrates.

This nation is radio vitriol
demanding accountability
and denying responsibility,
prodding, provoking, calling for blood,
while disavowing the dagger,
dismissing the prints, suppressing
the irrefutable: talk makes millions
violence comes cheap.

This nation is a self-congratulatory Prius driver
on a traffic-stagnant freeway screaming
into the ass of the herd
without a compass or a map,
mistaking activity for action,
motion for movement,
anger for rightness

This nation is a thousand denominations
claiming the path
howling blame
pointing and pointless
in the name of their many Gods
each the One and none for all.

This nation is warm
morality plays in forty-four minute video hours
proving crooks are caught, and good prevails,
droning bedtime tales to soothe us all
to sleep on stainless sheets untroubled
by the nagging alarm of conscience.

This nation is a twelve year old boy
with a swastika tattoo and a handgun collection,
a teenage daughter with an eating disorder
and twenty-four point three million parents
who never saw an indication anything was wrong.

This nation is sixteen self-loathing artists
blaming the chain for the shackles
of their coffee habit poverty,
staggering to the well of the muse
drawing up a leaking bucket
and casting wild the contents because

this nation is parched for inspiration.