This is the final scene from Lake Michigan, scene 18.
The beaches are filled with cages
and the cages are filled with bodies,
and the bodies are filled with burdens,
and the burdens consume the bodies,
and the bodies do not know to whom they owe their life.
I dropped my body on the sand and someone
tells me to pick it up.
I dropped to the sand to pick up my body and someone
tells me to steal more hair, to sell more flesh,
to steal more bones, to steal more fingers.
I tell them I cannot risk contaminating the data.
I tell them that if I steal more hair,
then the data will not be clean.
I tell them I cannot touch my own body out of fear
of contaminating the data.
I have a virus, I say.
I am contagious, I say.
I have salt in my body, I say.
No heat in my blood.
The sand is dying slowly it turns into a wall,
and in the wall there is a nook, and the nook there is light,
and in light there is God.
And in God, there is nothing, in nothing there's hope.
In hope, there is abandonment.
In abandonment, there is wound.
In wound, there is nation.
In nation, there are bones.
In bones, there is time, and in time there's light.
In light, there are numbers.
In numbers, are codes, and in codes there are mountains.
And in mountains there are bodies searching for bones.
In the mountains are tunnels, and in the tunnels
there is so much festering garbage.
The men in uniform take the garbage away,
but they have a hard time distinguishing the garbage
from the people, so they scoop it all up
and carry us into the next morning.
And the next morning there is a confession.
I put my burdens in the wrong body.
I have framed my burdens in the wrong language.
I've staked my burdens to the wrong nation.
I need medicine to sleep.
I need medicine to stop the shrieking in my ears.
I need medicine to make the Chicago corpses
turn into hydrangeas.
I need medicine to make the immigrants turn
into butterflies.
I need an injection to make the bureaucrats turn
into terrorists.
It is raining again on Lake Michigan.
Some say it is raining bodies, but really it is raining trash.
The trash they bomb us with explodes
when it lands on our bodies.
And our bodies are tornadoes, and the joke
turns into a mystery novel about how
God keeps his hands from shaking,
and he is about to destroy the universe.
I need my burdens, seeing the bodies on the beach.
I fight for my burdens, scream the bodies on the beach.
I know the blankness of my burdens
is a battle for love and country.
I know the blankness of my burdens
is a coda to the death of the city.
I don't know why I can't see the moon anymore
I can't see the stars, the sky anymore.
I don't even bother to look up.