Steps

Backboards without hoops

Like faces without noses

Let this be a lesson

Said the city

No gathering

Isolation Salvation Isolation Salvation

The only gates left open

belong to the cemetery

Its gaudy green

sprinklered hills

studded with gravestones

loping palms

germanic chapels

I am not alone I am not alone

Pal gangs

tromp through rows of

modest & conforming 

graves

grave graves

barely sunken graves

stones without slogans

“Gentle Warrior?”

“Aunt, Cousin, Dog Whisperer?”

Been shepherded

We the besneakered

The antsy pantsies

The peak baggers

The proximally flirtatious

The sensory junkies

The graveyard picnickers

The irony deficient