“Jacob Ethan Flores“

We step into Cartografia,
	The city of What-if
Here, the Queen of Imagination rules with a 
Lavish Scepter,
	Granting subjects every wish,
		All their whims.

Castle spires reach high,
Poking their crowns into quasars
Collecting frost on their awnings

The streets are littered with discarded
Daydreams.
Songs that were sung for one summer
Alone?
Well they hang around on telephone 
lines.

Nostalgia drips down the bark in the orchards, 
And memories seed the fields like wild oats.
	A guess dashes through the 
	grass
	A criticism circles overhead, waiting
	to strike.

We walk under these royal violet skies
We watch the circumstantial sun set
	And the stars yawn wide
Awake

	The past lives of mitochondria
catcall at the 
	future misfortune
of the New York Stock
	Exchange

.:”I’ve been an old soul
	all my life”:.

There’s a quarrel rustling 
In the bushes
	Building tension
	Living in the moment.
Politics live here now,
	Under these canopies of
Hope,
	Above these mangroves of 
Fear.

If you listen close,
With your breath held still,
You’d swear you could hear 
The burping grunts of propaganda.
And if you lay your head on the bank of the swamp,
	you can feel the rhythmic 
drop of wartime boots
		[.:*:.]
A mockingbird snaps us 
	Out of our eavesdropping

The meadow of forgiveness is where 
We spend our night.
	It is the sort of place that reinvigorates
the soul of a child who
lost their faith somewhere in 
a scantron.

Dawn peeks over the edge of eternity  
as if to say,
“There is no forever,
	there is only now.”

We put in a request 
	to go back home.
	Queen Imagination grants our 
wish,
	of course.

We tumble through the 
Gates of Cartografia.
	And through the ineffable
Wilderness,
	We continue our search for
   meaning.