Of Thee I Sing

The corn is planted and that rain has come

and the river has done it's flooding

and receding. This isn't Huck Finn's river –

not the place of promises and dreams

not that boyhood freedom. There is no freedom now;

the corporate oligarchs have taken it

turned it into pre-career testing... gotta know,

don't ya know, what Slot B your A'll fit into...

the future of America is dependent on

all those tax dollars our kids will pay.

They may as well start chipping away

now.

         A year ago this summer

two boys died who should not have

working a grain bin

they had no business working; but the old men

said they did it when they were young

and that's the problem with kids these days,

no backbone, no work ethic.

The corn is planted and growing

and the boys are planted, too.

But nothing grows on Bone Hill

but plastic flowers

and crab grass.

                         I hear the trains come through at night

and even now, the sound is still a comfort.

I love the sound of trains... some boyhood thing,

some dream I had once

of wearing a striped conductor's hat,

keeping time with a pocket watch

in the breast pocket of my overalls,

the miles of track stretching ahead and falling behind

relentless and forward. There aren't as many trains

as there were, and the interstates

have replaced the rail

and we are too busy

trying to make Exit 17

to slow down and see

the small towns slowing dying,

buried on Bone Hill

recorded in State Historical Society Notes,

and left to rot.

                       I dream of an America I have never seen,

one I recall in the songs of men wiser and more stalwart,

the memories of those who tell the stories

to keep that world alive. Miles and miles

of corn rows, miles of train track,

all disappearing like the small towns around them,

the histories locked away

in the forgotten back room

of a Carnegie Library Building

like some badly organized time capsule... after all,

if it ain't on Google, it ain't worth knowing.

A life unscanned and undigitized

is no life at all.

                       And the little that remains

is parceled out by angry old men

in the back rooms of dilapidated court houses...

decisions made to today, regretted tomorrow,

then forgotten in the name of expediency.

The memories lack resonance

and are not as important

as the price of corn,

the cost of fuel,

and the number of boys willing to work

so that some migrant won't get the job

and destroy our Way Of Life;

better 1000 dead children in grain bins

than one Mexican feeds his family.

Better 10,000 dead soldiers

than 536 out of work politicians.

                                                   I dream of an America

I have never seen; the one I first imagined

staring at the names of 52,000 dead men

on a marble wall in Washington D.C. I am told

the men died for me; I am told

students who marched off to war

are there for me. But I never asked them

to give up their childhoods. I never asked

for caskets draped in flags. I never asked

for Memorial Day cemeteries.

                                              The corn is growing

but there are no young men in the fields,

only old men in large machines,

kicking up pesticide dust that kills honey bees.

I dream of an America I have never seen

and it is of thee I sing.

    

[Scratch]: Palm Poem #7

Palm Poem #7

I've had my gutful of somber
And my heart can't take it anymore.
My heart beats in common time
And when I close my eyes
I feel the Earth move symmetrical
And when I breathe
It comes out my lungs
Hot like coal fire
Cool like the wind
From a late Spring storm.
All the words are my words;
None of the blessings belong to me.
In the beginning of the words
I found the beginning of me,
Moving symmetrical,
Lumbering over the thin skin of this tired world,
Seeing the new world coming
Popping up through the dead dirt
Plate tectonics, igneous shoulder blades
Born into the Sisyphus stone.

Keep to the Shaded Side of the Hill

You find out who you are in bus depots.

In the downtown Chicago Station,

late at night, there are times

when a hard floor is preferable

to yet another chair and you find

yourself eavesdropping on the tidbits

of several dozen conversations

that are all pretty much about the same thing.

Dreams take on a delusional quality

at 3 in the morning crammed in

next to a Taiwanese foreign exchange student

who asks everyone he sees what it must be like

to see a tornado. Pure thought percolated

into direct action-- words transubstantiate

into solid forms hanging listless on the heat

that bounces back up from the cement floor

and lingers like an the odor of moldy cheese.

You know the better class of mad men

because they are more eloquent

when describing their particular delusions;

and somehow when they tire of you

and find some other soul to preach at

their absence is palpable.

6 Repetitive Lines

The truth of a man is somewhere between

all the definitions foisted upon him:

brother /father/son/husband/uncle/man.

The truth of a man is somewhere beyond

all the obligations he bears upon himself:

brother/father/son/husband/uncle/man.

A Baboon Ponders the Spring

Fish out of water. The river is flooded.

Tornadoes tearing up the plain states

and the cats are fighting and yowling

between lightening strikes. Luckily

we live on a hill and the water

won't reach us, though the wind rattles

the house and shakes the spring birds

and budding leaves out of the not

quite awake magnolia tree. Weatherman

breaks into programing, apologizing

and telling us there's nothing to worry about

nothing at all. Last week,

they had the kids out of school

filling sand bags to hold back

the groaning and the spilling

of the Earth, the cracking and shifting

under trees without deep roots. Asian carp

jumping, breaking records over

the piles of sand bags along the river.

There is no accounting of time

and no reckoning of the river

and no point in waiting

for the magnolia tree to blossom

or for the wind to die down.

These things happen

on their own.  

When They Say The Damnedest Things

People will talk to you like that

just because they assume

you're a relatively new arrival

on Main Street means

you haven't lived anywhere else

and haven't seen anyplace else

and that somehow, the people here

in this particular place, are unique

on a planet harboring 9 billion souls

trampling depleted soil

and fucking like rabbits

to make more people

because children are the future

of social security … in addition to

being the ones who will fix

all of our mistakes, and the ones

who will pay for all of our sins –

unless, of course, they learn from us

and (as we'd prefer) deify us

after we're dead

and absolve us in their memories.

It's not that you're wrong, they say; it's only that

you don't understand (and couldn't possibly

since your parents aren't buried on Boot Hill)

and it might just be better

to leave these things

to the people who know better –

or at the very least, the people

who's families we have known

our entire lives and who

we don't mind belittling since

we knew them when they were in diapers...

which will rob any man of his dignity

whether he deserves it or not. But you,

you see, we don't know

the measure of you and we have nothing

to hold over you and when you speak

you speak like someone

who isn't one of us

and who never will be –

though your kids might have a shot.  

Sometimes She Breaks

Sometimes she breaks and all the world

breaks with her – though the world will

gimp along a bit better, it will not do so

with the same determination she has

even on the days when it rains

and the bed is more comfortable

than the glare of eyes she must face

on any given day after she walks

out the door and before she comes

again to the same sacred space.

Sometimes she breaks and she breaks

alone; the untidy sum of all our fears

bearing down on her back,

some 21^st Century Atlas with the world

bearing down and breaking her down –

except for her resolve, which people

who do not know better mistake

for blind optimism or naivete. But

what they do not know – and I think

what she does not know either –

is that she silently takes on

their fears and makes them her own.

Sometimes she breaks and when she cries

I am at a loss because I have long since

forgotten how to cry – and there is nothing

I can say, and even my arms

are not strong enough to hold her

and the world of worries she bears

on her back without regret

or the slightest hint

that she will ever learn to simply

let it all fall in pieces to the ground.

Meditation on the Vernal Shift

Thunder and rain renounce the winter and tell me it is Spring

announcing itself like an overdue guest. Thunder and rain

tell me somewhere someone will plant – I will not because

my thumb is purple not green and I have too much sympathy

for weeds and other devils anyway. Thunder rolls, a divine train

in the sky. Carrying what? Nobody knows and nobody dares

ask or attempts to sneak a peak at the conductor's manifest.

Rain falling, bouncing off the roof and back into the sky

or onto the ground; the rain is everywhere, the rain is nowhere

like words are my everything and my nothing and are everywhere

and nowhere. They fall and bounce like large drops replete

with memories of the eons lost and wandering amongst the clouds

like long forgotten deities. The muck and the glory of 406 years – no

of a thousand or a million or several millions – is encased

in each tear drop and they bounce off the roof and and they

fall on the ground and are boiled back into the sky and are rained down

again until the dirt will be sated with our bones

and our memories and our sins and it will all run 

in the streams and rivers and back to the sea, and over

and over and over. Thunder and rain renounce the winter

announcing Spring, the thunder train's manifest destiny echoing in and out

and out into space, creating that cosmic reverb no one ever talked about

on Star Trek. Thunder and rain tell me

it is spring and reminds me of the bass beat of house music

back when I liked house music, back when it was a meditation

to sit in the shadows and watch the hysterical loneliness played out

on dance floors – until the air so thick with sadness and desperation,

the old women imagining themselves young and digging into

fresh meat while the cops burst in checking ID's so they can grope

the fresh young girls in search of an arrestable offense
turned my blood to Kentucky Bourbon. The fights in the parking lot
are the same fights we have had for 406 – no a thousand –

no a million – years and they do not end because the memory of eons

is buried in our bone marrow and what is reaped is what is sown, whether

your thumb is purple or green or if you have no thumbs at all – 

anyway you go, it's all opposable anyway. 

Thunder and rain renounce the winter and tell me

(please tell me) it is Spring while the wind and the hail shake the house,

make the lights flicker and the storm windows rattle

like an old man's cancerous cough. I am upstairs and I wonder:

would it bother me if the house and I were blown away,

pushed onto the thunder train tracks with a divine engine bearing down

full speed, unable to slow down, for the manifest is full

and must be delivered on time? Thunder and rain renounces the winter,

calls out our names using a language we have forgotten, using words,

we have never bothered to learn, let alone be fluent in. Thunder and rain

renounce the winter, tell me it is Spring and remind me

that in all I find manifest when I open my eyes each day,

I will know – still – that there is something I am missing.

You could drive yourself crazy looking for a reason

The world is wobbling on its axis and ice caps are

melting and we're punching holes in the ozone

so we can have cars that will give us Facebook updates

and satellite radio and heated seats to keep our flabby

asses warm. Once, I heard the atom described as mostly

empty space that holds the power of the universe. We

are made of atoms. I am made of atoms. This desk

is made of atoms. This computer, my coffee mug, the coffee in it,

my scotch glass – all made of atoms vibrating so fast that they,

that we all give off the illusion of being solid. Once

I wrote a poem in ink that disappeared as I wrote it

and it was the best poem I have ever written. That I can

no longer read it, takes none of this away from me –

though I wish I could remember just one line. The lines

were made of ink strokes that were made of atoms,

and I knew the poem was good because it had no choice

but to vibrate differently. The bombs we make are made

of atoms, too, and we think they are destroying things –

houses, families, men, women, children, tanks, guns, soldiers

– when in fact it simply shocks them, makes them vibrate

different –the illusion of death and of destruction. Which

is to say, one could say that the only difference between

an effective bomb and an effective poem is the carnage

left behind – or the illusion of carnage. The world is

wobbling on its axis and the ice caps are melting and we

are punching holes in the ozone so that coal companies

can exploit workers in the mines and be able to breathe

the filtered air found in executive office buildings

and vacation retreats in Dubai. I love Beethoven, I think

because there's something in the vibration of his compositions

that matches the vibrations of my soul. I dislike Handel

for the exact same reason. Earthquakes in New Zealand

and Japan on the news in between updates on coked out

megalomaniacs, political sex scandals, and Reality TV.
The world is wobbling on it's axis and the religiholics

scream that the end of the world is near... not realizing

our end was in the beginning, and that all of this

has happened before. (And it will happen again.)

We lost our sense memory – an altered vibration, nothing

more – in the same way we now lose emails in spam filters.

The only difference is we notice the emails are missing.  

End Notes in the Book of Dreams: 2

There is never enough.

Work more but fail.

Work more and fall

farther behind. This thing

they call dreaming –

it's not like the movies.

It's not like the bedtime stories

we were told in history class.

It's not a churchman's parable

or some enlightened

moral allegory.

                        I am tired of being told

life is unfair; I am tired of hearing

this is the first lesson people learn

living on their own. I am tired –

exhausted in my bones of apathy

and being steeped in animated corpses

wandering the streets hoping only

for a good death

and the existence of heaven.

                                            If I were

unreasonable, I would understand. But

do not confuse

a simple life for a sparse one. I know

I am a creature with simple tastes; I ask only

that there be enough: a small semblance

creature comforts to remind me I am still human

in the face of my darkly dimming humanity.

Before it's all over, I expect I will be

one more howling baboon in a man-constructed wilderness--

lonely for memories

fast fading

resonance long lost.

                                Pulpit jockeys tell me

my purpose is to work until I die,

to deny my nature, and the natures

of others, and hope for heaven. Prophets shimmy

on crumbling street corners, beg for change

and scream about freedom

and sing about the end of time

and paint word pictures

of the rot buried in all our busted guts.

                                                           Sometimes,

I close my eyes and find that rare moment

that sensation of the clockwork universe

pulsing behind my eyes and in my fingers and toes.

Bur then it is gone. And I am left

with inadequate language

to illustrate. And the words always

come up lacking.

                           Not enough words.

Not enough anything. I think of the country

my father lived in and wonder I how I got here.

Surround myself with words. Books are blankets

for an uneasy soul that can never find rest.

A cup of coffee, a desk, a pen, blank paper.

Words waft and fade in cigar smoke.

True illumination comes from an $8 beer can lamp

and the cadence of a wind up clock

that never keeps proper time.

Transcription of a Dropped Cell Phone Call

Myself idyll casualty

wild carousel collected.

Wine-stained office

fact men on madness

ask road west. Locust

calling empowered

the selected clockwork.

Benito melancholy waste,

death's selected letters,

basic Zooey Cossak House.

Tortilla typhoon cradle.

Island pictures mind.

Blues longer drunken

Reigns notebook being

rum screwjack fear

carnival air-conditioned cancer.

Sketches streets.

Installment journey.

End Notes in the Book of Dreams: 1

We hibernate for the winter under blankets

and behind plastic covered storm windows

and dream of the desert. Sensations echo

familiar and faint smells have resonance:

cilantro, margarita salt, and cigar smoke,

the feel of a dry, cool air against our legs

in an East Valley February sunset. Snow –

we think to ourselves but never acknowledge –

snow will be the final death of us, buried

in this old farmhouse on a dilapidated back street,

sitting on a corner lot that once (briefly) was all the dream

we could muster. It was all the dream

we thought we wanted.

                                     Now

our only hope is an early Spring.

And even that, I get the feeling,

will not come so easily, or as quickly

as we need. My innards tell me daily

they are withering from the absence of the sun.

My liver is saturated with woe and cheap beer,

trying to make the time pass more easily,

since it will not go fast. My aching feet

miss the flat expanse and cacophony of city streets.

We are too wise to believe in the pre-existence of paradise

but our souls are foolhardy enough to believe

we can still build it – if only

we can find a place

where the earth is neither scorched

nor saturated, neither buried

nor exposed. Where you and I

will (finally) be at peace

and will at last understand

our place in a world

that has, thus far,

declined all self-explanation

and leaves us bread crumb clues

and the odd comfort that comes

at the cost of divine apathy.

Poem: Last Man in the Elevator

Seeing Frank is always trying
and the way he talks
I always leave feeling like
the dumb bastard has been
nibbling on my ear drum
and sticking his long spindly fingers
up my nose
to scratch my frontal lobe
in search of some how-to text
describing what it means
to be a human being.

I suppose it's not his fault.
Nothing is nobody's fault.
Not these days.

When I think about Frank
I wonder what the name is
for the disease (because
it's always a disease these days)
that describes exactly why, 
whenever I am trying
to relax he hones in on me
like a fucking bat
and refuses to let me
leave in spite of all my
protests that I am
expected elsewhere
where he is not.  

Gourmand Carnival

The deep broasted lard a la carte

comes a top sloppy blanched greens

over salted and under flavored. And,

for the discerning palette,

might I suggest a warmed sniffer

of freeze dried rinds, liquified

under high pressure using

a secret method known only

to our Aztec Sou Chef

and his mute assistant, Molly

(who is, by all accounts,

one hell of a girl, in spite of

her strict adherence to a

pay to play attitude; our

poor poor Sou Chef

has to pay for even the most

conciliatory of kisses, and her lips,

he assures me, always taste of

who or whatever she had in it

most recently.) And if neither of those

appeals, sir, might I suggest a

nice cocktail or a ceviche salad

made from the fingers of babies

who died from SIDS?

Backtracking

The man wearing the bright green

bib overalls, he told me two lefts

and half a mile past

where the barn burned down

and all those pigs died. Then I’ll see

a sign pointing the way back

to the intersection where

I should’ve stopped and

asked for directions

but was being too stubborn

in my insistence that we follow

the path of the waning sun

to our next destination.

And Counting

Christ. 388 days and the tundra

is still expansively contracting.

Fields of green and brown corn

have turned shit and soil brown,

laced with remanded snow

and lingering ice. It was once

explained to me when I was

very young: in the winter

the world sleeps

and the soil rests

to prepare for the spring

for what was once a plow

but is now a machine that cuts

more and better; plus, the cost

is more and better than most

houses and has taken the place

of hundreds of men and

man hours. It's big business here

and the corn is owned by companies

and seeds, like our future is copyrighted

by the anonymous holding company

that bought our parents' futures

cheap with promises

of a peaceful old age replete

with fat corn fed dreams.

Death Head Cheerleaders

They marched into the room one at a time

shadows from the valley of death

every long hair atop their heads wound

tight and high and kept in place

with heavy duty hair lacquer –

the kind marketed only

to Southern Baptists and Drag Queens –

their faces dried out

their eyes full of recently applied tears

legs swishing under the layers of clothes

and ankle length denim skirts

hands shaking from years of clutching bibles

and fresh from the freezer casserole dishes

murmuring the prayers taught to them by elders

who, too, were afraid of the dark. Leaning over

carefully, each one whispering only

so everyone could hear, asked

the only question they knew to ask:

                                                         Are You Right With God?

Accepting the dying woman's moans

for the answer they were looking for,

they shuffled out and back into the shadows

in the manner that they shuffled in –

shaking heads made heavy with hair pins

and fearful restraint ,silent as the grave

they try to hold at bay

using wooden crosses, family hymnals,

and worn out bibles listing the names

of the dead in the front and back cover

like a list of pious all-stars who,

like the savior whose name

they have all laid claim to

was revised over countless years

of enforced transubstantiation

in a way that in no way

contradicts the fire and brimstone preview

their pastor gives them each

and every Sunday.

The Only Laws In A Small Town That Really Mean Anything

1.

Above all, make no waves

and make no enemies

unless you share the same ones

as everyone else.

2.

Go to church, even if

you don't believe in it.

Otherwise people will

remember this and will

assume everything else.

3.

Don't drink too early

or stay out too late.

And if you drink at home

buy your booze one town over

where no one knows

what you look like.

4.

If you live in a trailer

people will assume

you're lazy, on drugs,

or a whore.

5.

There are two kinds

of dirty: work dirty

and lazy dirty. Know

which one you are

and act accordingly.

6.

If you vote,

only tell everyone

who you vote for

if you vote with the

majority. Otherwise,

you'll be taken for a fool.

Or worse, a Democrat.

7.

Be sure to look the part

people have decided you

play, regardless of

how bad the casting may be.

8.

Learn how to talk about NASCAR

and how to grow a garden.

9.

Avoid sarcasm, since

no one will know

that's what it is anyway.

10.

What people say about you

after you're dead

is far more important

than the fact

that you were a bastard

while you were alive.

You know you're redeemed

when they put your name

on a cement bench

in front of the courthouse.

Untitled Lines / Post Solstice

Winter breeds patience out of desperation.

There is no instant gratification

When the snow plow buries you alive

And your only connection with the world

Comes in form of internet social networks

And high definition reality on ESPEN and the Travel Channel.

Realize (and remind yourself) this is a hermit's paradise;

All the one way talk you need

Without having to worry you're being judged

On how long it's been since you had a hair cut,

Or on whether you've taken a bath lately.

Snow outside made perfect by the thin layer of ice

Versus the dichotomous dirty snow left behind

By the shovel and the plow and the boot.

Look forward to Christmas, not for the gifts,

But because Solstice means

The days will get longer and the snow

Will gradually melt away, leaving behind

Something resembling Patience

Mingled with the hope

You have not yet dared to name

Or even appear to recognize.

Taking Out the Garbage The Morning After a Snow Storm

Up before the sun –

eyes pop open thanks to internal alarm clock

and the fear that the garbage men dug them-

-selves out last night. Pull on yesterday's

dirty clothes and go about bundling my-

-self up against the December winter outside.

Walk out onto the enclosed porch; the cooler air

pulls me out of my stupor as I

pull on my snow boots and turn on

the outside light so I can see what I have

to look forward to. Don't look up

I tell myself til it's done.

Grab the shovel.

Get to work.

                          It's me, a cheap shovel,

and the memory of a warm bed

against freshly packed snow

and a thin layer of ice that crackles

when the shovel breaks the surface. Don't look up

I tell myself til it's done. Get to the end

of the walk, meet the pile of snow and ice and rock

left behind by the snow plow. They don't pile it

in front of my neighbors' houses this way.

Start from the top

and dig my way down

thinking about about my landlord's

lawn tractor plow attachment

and I wonder if he's awake yet. Don't look up

I tell myself. Not til it's done. Slice through the pile

and step out onto the cleared street.

Snow reaches my thighs and I

can only revel so long in my victory

before I glance left

at the driveway.

                           The snow plow

didn't disappoint. Dig my way down,

through compacted snow and ice and gravel

hoping the shovel doesn't break – until

there's a space big enough to push through

and attack the thinner layer of pristine snow and ice

leading to the garage door. It breaks easy and I

move in a rectangle pattern

because it makes me feel like

it's disappearing faster, so that I

can feel like I'm winning

in spite of the forecast I'm

pushing out of my mind that calls

for more snow the day after tomorrow.

Don't look up, I tell myself

til it's done.

                      One last giant pile

tall as my waist and that

only so she can get the car out

when she leaves for work

in a few hours. Think about

the spaghetti dinner she cooked last night,

how it was heavy and warm in my belly

even though my hands and feet were cold

in spite of the heat. Dig my way down and

make my way through. Check my work

and allow myself a futile sense

of accomplishment.

                                Perch the garbage

atop the pile of snow. I know

the garbage men will throw

the recycling bin in the middle of the yard

to make me trudge through the snow

to retrieve it. Try not to think about it,

I tell myself.

                    Go back inside.

My hands and feet are warm. Strip

off cold sweaty clothes like I learned

from T.J. down in New Orleans

who warned me that a damp t-shirt

would kill me whether I was sleeping

on a park bench or soft bed.

That's how the elements finally kill you,

he said. They wait until you get sloppy.