Forts

They could not keep anything out really,
but the could keep out everything truly.

It would begin with a box,
not just any box
but a television, stereo, speaker,
or furniture box. Anything large enough to
hide within, to makes ones own. A new land, territory, island
and most importantly a fortress.
From there the place would web out powerfully
in blanket walls, pillow towers, cloth pillars,
and ceilings, meshed and built from the corners
of every quilt passed down and up.
Some of the blankets would be thin and old so
the lights overhead would bleed through quietly
in muddled gleams of basement luminescent.
Heavy books too unbearably long to read would weigh down
the soft dome carefully. One wrong jump-up would bring it falling down,
a maelstrom of everything cushioned.
Beneath the fabric shell it would spawn out
into narrow corridors for crawling to and fro.
Our support was flexible,
where table legs and card-tables would hold up heaven reluctantly.
Inside the palace everything essential would be there
an office, meeting room, counseling chambers, game room,
armory, infirmary, apothecary, and bed chamber.
Dart guns would be stowed along with plastic swords,
axes, shields, knives, and scythes.
Nothing could move the sheet walls, not a threat would
stir us, no army, invasion, attack, siege, monster, alien,
beast, behemoth, or brat.
Blankets beat bricks, internal imagery greater then vision,
every factual was thrown far and away.
Of course the greatest enemy was from within,
where king would turn on subject, or subject
on king, and eventually the sheet walls were torn down
in favor a new fort
grander and more amazing then the previous
and it would share the same fate.

They could not keep anything out really,
but the could keep out everything truly.