House Hunting

We were to take that hill.
It was like the bald head of a character actor
With dark houses as the ridge of hair
And an occasional smog comb over.
We were punks, urban and stylized,
But also ready to kick in the teeth of a white
Picket fence. I was the radiotelephone operator
Speaking with a mysterious clairvoyant
About my alleged future.
Others carried the strange currency and bibles,
The machines of torture and evasion.
The boxelder trees, the perished perennials,
We saw bats perched in the shape of a cross on a sheep
As we inched along the culverts and siding
In the irrefutable late evening witching hour.
We used hand signals and clickers.
We took panicked birds at face value.
Our weapons shone like gentlemen’s artifacts
As we fought our way through the suburban province
With dark women with gray eyes alone at windows,
Their commanders with crew cuts in bed with the flu.
The citadel was guarded by a man with a clipboard.
Our strategy was silence and philosophy.
I bayoneted a man’s dress shirt on the line.
Watch out for landmines, the voice on the radio squawked.
Sinkholes too, someone said.
It was a land of smoke and mirrors where people were
Murdered for the simplest misdeed.
We were to take that hill
And by god we were aiming to do so.