America

If I'm really done with Locke and I think I am
Renouncing my inheritance, the social contract, that government
instituted to secure these rights, then I am giddily set free,
let loose (or abandoned) to imagine other things, but then

so was that young neurotic Austrian painter of landscapes
and designer of Aryan battle flags: he imagined his people
right into hell. So soft, soft on that, please. Go slow.

Listen. Suppose there is an America, drunk and unsteady,
made of dreams and pixilated stories, lost and looking for the way home:
a person of sorts. Suppose it's our job to try to get him home to bed
without damaging himself (or others) more than can be helped.
Suppose he is us, and our every imagining blazes a path
in the flickering net of his brain. Suppose his incoherent weeping 
is ours. Suppose 
it all matters dreadfully, and we are to hang his mask on our faces
and learn to face the world.