Broken Boxes

The broken boxes, small containers, locks
All rendered useless, as they always were--
There's not a yard without a broken box
Here in this neighborhood. Must we endure
Exposure of these things we want to hide?
With guns they came, but hammers were their tools--
They only took where secrets would abide
And we're exposed as intimates and fools.
The contents of our boxes, those they left
For all to see, to expose all our lives
There in the grass, the intimate bereft
Of intimacy, all that it derives.
The boxes broken are meant to expose
That no one is the person who he shows.