Ethnic Cleansing

by Eric Beeny

if only all the world's nations could

pool their people into a sixty-year orgy,

mix all the paint in the same bucket, so to speak,

where we'd whirl a thick, liquid hurricane

whose only eye is a clearly blurred sweep

of one color we'd paint our prison walls with

to calm us down when night sticks are

just canes to support short tempers

and we'd look up to find the ceiling's been lifted,

flung off somewhere, and we've turned

the sky's limited-edition blue t-shirt inside-out,

hidden seems blossoming light beams

to blend us blind, but we're still to busy

adjusting the tints on our rec-room monitors

to rebuild those pedestals we so often soapbox on

rather than oxing erasers around for old slates,

erasers I've mistaken for brushes, not just

to paint over something anyone could

say, but anything that could be said.