strange absence

cream soda
in a dream
as a child

looking back at this starving world
no one has ever fed it
but with plastic junk
some packets of methamphetamines
and Chinese made implements.
Where are the flowers growing,
shipped in teak holds
of ever strong clippers
that they gave the kids
rides on
to pass out flowers
to those desert coasts
where stories
and hourglass sand
was traded
as people laughed
and smiled
and held each other,
even over the bottle.

cream white walls
on that luxury liner,
made with splits of black wood

but for the Fedex junk
and the houses of horror
and the people blowing their minds out
you wouldn't know
where we are.

i'm glad that i recall
that cream soda
that sold for fifty cents
in some store
that smelled weird

but I guess it was lacking flowers,
and as for its naval charts,
they didn't even have a navigational table
telling them where they were at
and where they should go
under the nightmare desert sunshine
that led some deft existentialist
to write about killing an Arab
(people liked it so much
that it was celebrated and fed to school children,
it was called The Stranger).