A paper Burger King Crown,

Lunch with mom in the park,

She adjusts it over and over,

But it never fits right upon your head.

Our mother taught us that if we were good,

God would bless us

With health, wealth, and prosperity,

But she did not know that by the time

We came of age, we had already run out.

The old borrowed time and money from the young.

It did not start in the castle's highest tower.

There was no dragon. There will be no princess.

Even the peasants had a sabbath on which to rest,

But after all these years, what do we have now?

Fifteen dollars for a kid's meal at Burger King.

Fifteen hundred dollars for a room so far

From the castle, we can no longer imagine it.

This is collective bargaining. The third stage of grief.

Our parents convinced themselves

That wealth was a virtue.

Prosperity theology.

We convinced ourselves

That I was okay to be a sinner.

We changed the definition of right and wrong,

But we never stopped paying indulgences,

We never stopped meeting them in the middle

By admitting we were guilty in the confessional.

There was never a priest on the other side.

There can only be one monarch,

But how many millionaires?

We dropped our hamburger on the ground,

And the ants rushed to consume it.

A king sits upon his throne with a paper crown,

He dares not leave because it is raining.

He paid his children, his sons and his daughters,

To hold the Sword of Damocles in their hands,

Knowing they loved him enough to never let go.

He did not mind the cuts on their palms until

He felt the first drop of blood roll down the blade.

When there are not enough workers

To till their fields and harvest their crops,

They tell us, all that they do, they do

To prevent the extinction of man at our hands

When our theoretical children would starve.

The solution, they tell us, is to work harder:

Cut down the forests to make more fields,

And till those fields to make more crops.

They will kindly take the crops

Sell them back to us at a profit,

And they will use their profit

To pay us what we have earned.

On a sunny hill, a child weaves threads of grass

Into a braid. Yes, even the spring flowers

Can be made into chains if we call them weeds.

It all starts with the sun, photosynthesis,

And I promise, if they could put a price

On the sun's golden light, they would,

And they have.

In their council of kings, they have decided,

Public parks, public libraries, public schools.

These places, where we might exist for free

Should not be subsidized by our fellow man.

One by one, they close their doors,

They shutter their windows,

They are sold to private firms

Until there is nowhere left for us but the fields.

An aloe plant grows in unkempt grass, but when

Its bloom, a long, thin flower above the leaves,

We called it a Witch's Finger. In the distance,

Steeples loom above the trees, like everything

On this side of town, it's just out of reach. If

You wanted peace, you wouldn't look for trouble.

For five dollars, a woman will read your palms,

But she warns you never to talk to spirits at night—

Same reason you should always lock your doors,

And keep dollar bills in the bottom of your shoe.

When someone broke into the cars at the church,

Why is it the police cars came to us instead?

If the black-out curtains are thick enough, night falls

Whenever we want it to; a kind of forewarning,

A kind of warming, as the earth gets hotter,

We become more like the animals we are.

Eventually, you will get used to the sirens,

But you will never get used to the fear of them.

You learn to appreciate the silence, if you find it;

It is one of the few luxuries you can still afford.

Draw three gilt cards and place them face down,

But I lost the High Priestess under the fridge.

She, like us, has learned the rules of this place:

If you wear a hoodie, never wear the hood up.

Keep your head up. Hands out of your pockets.

Don't talk too much. Don't stay silent. Eyes forward.

This is why my hometown is so violent at night,

And during the day, and when it's hot or cold.

They pray for protection instead of peace;

They have forgotten what it means to love.

We have forgotten how to embrace the divine

Inside ourselves, how can we embrace it in others?

But if we hide under the fridge long enough,

Maybe rain will come, maybe sirens will go away.

Silence and solitude, the only sanctuary left to us.

When we cannot even find it inside our houses—

A church is just a building. A holy place can be

Wherever we are willing to go and seek God,

But God only goes so far; Even He knows

Never to set foot on this side of town.