MENDING WALL, REDUX

Wrapped in a red thought,
underneath a brown thought
weighing on my head
with a tropical siesta;
drowsy in the stillness
that clings to my knees like strangers
praying in a strange land;
fighting sleep, not wanting
to let my guard down:
There's always someone waiting
to slip a knife between your ribs,
or lock you into a stinking van
full of migrating hallucinations
stoked in Hell's inferno.

Wrapped in a red thought,
underneath a brown thought
blood flowing under my Mexican skin—
where it belongs!

I can't let them do it!
If they build a wall around me while I sleep,
who knows if I'll return to a world
where there are no boundaries—
where I'm a man, not a machine?

MENDING WALL, REDUX

Will I awake in a country
where there are no dreams
but the dreams of an imbecile,
who tweets incessantly
to his constituency of imbeciles
in a paranoiac wasteland
where I will never be free?