That's Not What That Word Means
Like the Bow River, flowing North to South,
empty whiskey bottles fall from North to South in
an explosion of broken glass and blanket lies.
Whiskey flows and burns the throat, everything flows.
Flowing is the root of it, the singular truth.
People flow from street to street, expressionless faces so
absorbed in daily routine. They run right past him, the
silent beggar, a singular rock blocking the stream.
Everything in civilization flows, flows
like the blood pouring down the indigenous woman’s
face as blanketed lies carry her away down the stream,
voice lost in the white noise water
flows like rivers of lies that say they’re keeping peace but
carry carnage in a hip holster. That’s not civilized, that’s
not even a real thing, it’s a word you made up 400 years ago
to disrupt the flowing of a river that wasn’t yours to dam.
I know a river that starts at the top of the Heritage train station
stairs and ends with its pants halfway down and folding over
like a lawn chair. Civilization is not the name of a river, you
made that up. Civilization flows from the throat as spit flying
from the mouths of pro life campus protestors.
Civilization is a river that stems from my crotch and splatters
in a police station parking lot.
Let’s all be civilized, flow from North to South where the
river ends.
