We are Babylon, we are the sleepers, we are the beginning of the terrible end.
We are the beautiful, we are the seas upon which he sails
we are the keys to the chains that hold the captives
we are the place where God dwells, we are the earth in between heaven and hell
we are the fireflies wings, we are the sails on the black sea
we are a nation of mourning in a kingdom of sorrow
we are the blood on the thorn, the wave about to give birth
we are the skin beneath the scab
we are the light amid the shadows
we are his love in your eyes
you are my love in his heart
I am his heart beneath the earth
I am the core at its center
He is the center
We are the reflection of all that once was and is to come
You are the beauty that pains me to see
and you are the light of all our lives
I am the love you've always wanted
you've always wanted
you've always wanted
you shall want no longer.

Skies, I see the skies and they travel forever and a day. Lakes run through the fields discovering creeks that run through our lives.

I have seen America, I have witnessed the simplicity of farm life being enough for one and all. I have heard America, I have heard the talk of food prices and the peace of worrying about nothing.

I have felt America, I have felt the soil between my fingers, the dew from the morning between my toes. I sat and watched the creation in their hushed reverie of all that was created around them.

I have seen America, I have traveled around and through her seeing her best and the rotten core of her worst. I am America, I am the embodiment of all that was at odds but is now unified under the banner of equality. I know America, I know the thirst for violence that courses through her veins despite her best efforts. I shame America, her bloodlust, her contempt for the poor and steadfast who live unnoticed, thankless quiet lives. I entered America, I moved through her heart destined to find solace in her complex simplicity. I desire America, I desire all that she should be but isn't. I desire her righteousness that has been sacrificed for self-righteousness. I desire her bed of ferns beneath her piles of money.

I have lost America, I have lost her to her greed and war-mongering. I have lost her to a city of ruin and desolation, caved in by floods and left by her government to waste away. I have lost America, lost her to political ideal instead of human ideal. I have lost her to her own reflection. But this America, this fragility, this inhospitality, this young child, she is but a babe in crib, a whale in her sea of her disallusionment.

But in this America, this land, this earth, this violence, I found peace.

J.M. Prater