Foundation Fire, Unworldly Waters

Little birds, fear not;

smoke is overrated.

Now fire, like, wow!

Hope and jump

and follow your instincts:

sure, sure, sure

Even the volcano,

in the grand scheme

of things is a mere

Dimple upon the Earth:

Just as life is just paper

exposed to black ink

Civilization keeps

the fire lion in storage

for the burnishing of your white walls

This image, this mirror,

is the alternate universe,

so each side is of no matter

This sleeping fat cat,

finding no bluesy suitors

is just like nature denied its day

Such is the way

for men and women:

Constant are both frost and fire

And the vanquished,

concrete moon

pulls light off the world

The blackened well, beneath the surface,

is all man or animals will need

for one-thousand years 

The Portico of Complaints

Hear yea, hear yea,

the polemic pandemonium

dedicated to Salvador Dali

because the watch

is freezing back into summer

as smoke signals fade,

as fences fall in high winds

destined for the tornado alleys

of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas,

dusty bowls rising with temperatures,

dropping into the cold turkeys selling

at high dough in the commodity aisles

of Wall Street, whose surrogate,

the U.S. government, the price being right,

crush the crazed population into noodle factories

for blond spokeswomen on political talk shows,

from brunette blues historians on radio shows,

for beats and bleats in morning light, dusky damsels

of disaster restoration industries soaking in cash,

paranormal as X-class solar flares pumping up the volume

for tomes, old as Dante, cooking up the mortal coils of desire,

for layers of cakes, sold on saucers in the medieval

meteors thrown down at earth by the nightly news gods

who sell fear, beer, batteries and basketballs,

shock-worn baseballs obvious and mournful

as a black cat's quarter-moon shaped cry

from Siam to the Himalayan Rockies, from Hawaii to Mars,

to heal the ever present aches of what we use to bake

when the in-and-out burglar light beats us

back to sanity when the new word

for "bad" is Syria

and the rotting core

of democracy

is a "Here's to looking

at you kid" call

to "winning the future"

and our miserable new habit

for showing disdain

for each other

walks on, waxes off ...

Surely, there must be

better breezes

after all of this ...

Surely, there is hope

in the fact

not all winds

bring down our tents

as the spooks,

in the shadows

reveal butterflies

on fire

Last Water

The last drop

of water in Meteor City,

a parched hole in the desert

with a few mobile homes, maybe,

echoes of steel pedal romantics

in action, still seeking factions

to fight off Black Mesa coal companies,

joining other drops of water, rising,

to make or break into clouds,

cloud computing sympathies

and waving into grains:

Behold, the national sacrifice areas,

the place once known as First Water,

a ten-thousand-year walk by the third drop,

pushed through sandstone beneath concrete

sidewalks in the city, good to the last cop,

wearing a belt secretly glowing of uranium,

coal and waters pressurized through slurry pipes

by chicken hawks, or, black parking lot crows

big-breasted, looking slightly tasty,

as we walk home, desolate and lonely

back into the wilderness, two Pahannas

who pretended to understand for a decade

the pain of sacred springs drying up,

the kachinas dancing down to mathematic,

automated figures at your cash registers,

ya, you, you know who, how do you do,

say halleluja, as you carve into up into space masks

inserting pictures of the glassy knolls, hogan holes,

Merlin's magic wands to the center of the crystalline earth

The fourth drop of water, a drip down the throat,

issued through a rubber tube, hardly enough

to rush down the rocks of the red desert stream,

the drying heat of seventy-mile-per-hour winds

jack ripping, ripping jack

over the navel of the fourth world

powered by the Navajo generational station,

the dynamite that broke the highway,

the lions of commerce, roaring and erect,

bread bears, steel-eyed salmons from far away

dreaming up plumes of steams, making cloud,

making raining, falling onto the earth again,

the fifth drop of water, most likely your last,

video punked across the nation, one last drop

of coffee on the tongue for salvation,

one last drop for the animals of immigration,

a red dirt crust of crunchy sourdough

for order on the border, an entire stitch

of moleculed waters for a set of signals

for the matrix, a crowd, a crisis swamping

into a last great flood, for one last river boat,

one last drop of ink on a single sheet of paper,

rippling now into a red stratos curtain

like a flug hung upside down across

the Little Colorado River Valley

as the national canyon anthem sounds off:

O say can you tame the raw dead Sainty Clause,

O disbelievers, O, pain relievers of our kitchen sink,

the green tinge of tornadoes, predicted by the hour,

moving north almost fast as the brown soldiers

on the Hopi mesas holding back the end of the world,

wearing the many coasts of winter, still, in the mourning chill,

cast off in spring around the small hogan rooms

in a confusion about the new currents,

closing the roads in the Dust Bowl daze

of explosive gusts, that last water

summed up by sweet sugar fairies

draining into hot choco-lates

in the nasty Nestles

of your no longer say so,

into Perrier bottles

for celebrities,

public relations

people fibbing up

Fijis tipped

for industry,

petting down,

your last puddle,

your last well,

your last water

stolen and sold

in the grocery

store

aisle,

and kept in

in the phaoroh's urn

of our mutual

no more

say

so

Survival in the Spring

The fool moon

is an unjust cliche

passing directly overhead

and I've ached out of exhaustion

so many times the tired millions

of meteoric terrors, media-mad errors,

the pa-rum-pum-pum of Christmas,

now long behind us, is only the echo

of a car crash we never witnessed,

only heard in the siren song

beneath the loud roar of daily trains

passing along the highway,

and our soft whispers

muted in each minute of distance

remains as a glassy tranquility

in the lunar space, the ice nine

of the night sky, as the dust swirls

into a sound so lonely,

a solace at the end of March,

we thank the great sky

for no more murder

The white stripe of the local skunk,

confused as the buds on trees,

in unending misunderstanding

of the new weather patterns,

limbs freezing then thawing,

chilling over again, forgotten

as the breeze, teasing towels

of numerous cold showers

for all seasons in a single day,

twenty-four-hour revelations

of the mountain lion warning us

with a growl in the Gaian solace

at midnight into the back-stepping

mystery of the morning, cars running

late, buses running late, trucks,

running furious late to avoid garbage beasts,

cement mixers awake, alive as thirsty ants,

churning up into government, then corporations,

into bellicose budgies happy to pave the world

Gone are those long lost minutes

where you unleashed your moorings,

when your screamed out your sorrows

and locked your mechanical door

without a master as the snow storm's

marshal lawyer, a colonel clinking

his dry cup for a salute of sunless,

derisive, jarring melodies unheard,

the fire of the gut-rotten belly,

rip-ribbed fat, toothless and mean

in his oily flannel cotton shirt:

O, who is chuckling now, you cheating

Chubby Checker! We are free of you.

Free! And winter is a dead and past

as we feel well enough

to start worrying again

about what is normal,

as our eyes, moist in emotion,

push out the main street iron

ions of ancient dirt, seeking

to join the information flow

of geese, buzzards and eagles

flying north into the blindness

of the king, the queen, the jesters

jeering in the crowd, the black crows,

re-entering the Earth's atmosphere

to regain unearthly sanity

The Portico of Complaints

Hear yea, hear yea,

the polemic pandemonium

dedicated to Salvador Dali

because the watch

is freezing back into summer

as smoke signals fade,

as fences fall in high winds

destined for the tornado alleys

of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas,

dusty bowls rising with temperatures,

dropping into the cold turkeys selling

at high dough in the commodity aisles

of Wall Street, whose surrogate,

the U.S. government, the price being right,

crush the crazed population into noodle factories

for blond spokeswomen on political talk shows,

from brunette blues historians on radio shows,

for beats and bleats in morning light, dusky damsels

of disaster restoration industries soaking in cash,

paranormal as X-class solar flares pumping up the volume

for tomes, old as Dante, cooking up the mortal coils of desire,

for layers of cakes, sold on saucers in the medieval

meteors thrown down at earth by the nightly news gods

who sell fear, beer, batteries and basketballs,

shock-worn baseballs obvious and mournful

as a black cat's quarter-moon shaped cry

from Siam to the Himalayan Rockies, from Hawaii to Mars,

to heal the ever present aches of what we use to bake

when the in-and-out burglar light beats us

back to sanity when the new word

for "bad" is Syria

and the rotting core

of democracy

is a "Here's to looking

at you kid" call

to "winning the future"

and our miserable new habit

for showing disdain

for each other

walks on, waxes off ...

Surely, there must be

better breezes

after all of this ...

Surely, there is hope

in the fact

not all winds

bring down our tents

as the spooks,

in the shadows

reveal butterflies

on fire

Last Water

The last drop

of water in Meteor City,

a parched hole in the desert

with a few mobile homes, maybe,

echoes of steel pedal romantics

in action, still seeking factions

to fight off Black Mesa coal companies,

joining other drops of water, rising,

to make or break into clouds,

cloud computing sympathies

and waving into grains:

Behold, the national sacrifice areas,

the place once known as First Water,

a ten-thousand-year walk by the third drop,

pushed through sandstone beneath concrete

sidewalks in the city, good to the last cop,

wearing a belt secretly glowing of uranium,

coal and waters pressurized through slurry pipes

by chicken hawks, or, black parking lot crows

big-breasted, looking slightly tasty,

as we walk home, desolate and lonely

back into the wilderness, two Pahannas

who pretended to understand for a decade

the pain of sacred springs drying up,

the kachinas dancing down to mathematic,

automated figures at your cash registers,

ya, you, you know who, how do you do,

say halleluja, as you carve into up into space masks

inserting pictures of the glassy knolls, hogan holes,

Merlin's magic wands to the center of the crystalline earth

The fourth drop of water, a drip down the throat,

issued through a rubber tube, hardly enough

to rush down the rocks of the red desert stream,

the drying heat of seventy-mile-per-hour winds

jack ripping, ripping jack

over the navel of the fourth world

powered by the Navajo generational station,

the dynamite that broke the highway,

the lions of commerce, roaring and erect,

bread bears, steel-eyed salmons from far away

dreaming up plumes of steams, making cloud,

making raining, falling onto the earth again,

the fifth drop of water, most likely your last,

video punked across the nation, one last drop

of coffee on the tongue for salvation,

one last drop for the animals of immigration,

a red dirt crust of crunchy sourdough

for order on the border, an entire stitch

of moleculed waters for a set of signals

for the matrix, a crowd, a crisis swamping

into a last great flood, for one last river boat,

one last drop of ink on a single sheet of paper,

rippling now into a red stratos curtain

like a flug hung upside down across

the Little Colorado River Valley

as the national canyon anthem sounds off:

O say can you tame the raw dead Sainty Clause,

O disbelievers, O, pain relievers of our kitchen sink,

the green tinge of tornadoes, predicted by the hour,

moving north almost fast as the brown soldiers

on the Hopi mesas holding back the end of the world,

wearing the many coasts of winter, still, in the mourning chill,

cast off in spring around the small hogan rooms

in a confusion about the new currents,

closing the roads in the Dust Bowl daze

of explosive gusts, that last water

summed up by sweet sugar fairies

draining into hot choco-lates

in the nasty Nestles

of your no longer say so,

into Perrier bottles

for celebrities,

public relations

people fibbing up

Fijis tipped

for industry,

petting down,

your last puddle,

your last well,

your last water

stolen and sold

in the grocery

store

aisle,

and kept in

in the phaoroh's urn

of our mutual

no more

say

so

Survival in the Spring

The fool moon

is an unjust cliche

passing directly overhead

and I've ached out of exhaustion

so many times the tired millions

of meteoric terrors, media-mad errors,

the pa-rum-pum-pum of Christmas,

now long behind us, is only the echo

of a car crash we never witnessed,

only heard in the siren song

beneath the loud roar of daily trains

passing along the highway,

and our soft whispers

muted in each minute of distance

remains as a glassy tranquility

in the lunar space, the ice nine

of the night sky, as the dust swirls

into a sound so lonely,

a solace at the end of March,

we thank the great sky

for no more murder

The white stripe of the local skunk,

confused as the buds on trees,

in unending misunderstanding

of the new weather patterns,

limbs freezing then thawing,

chilling over again, forgotten

as the breeze, teasing towels

of numerous cold showers

for all seasons in a single day,

twenty-four-hour revelations

of the mountain lion warning us

with a growl in the Gaian solace

at midnight into the back-stepping

mystery of the morning, cars running

late, buses running late, trucks,

running furious late to avoid garbage beasts,

cement mixers awake, alive as thirsty ants,

churning up into government, then corporations,

into bellicose budgies happy to pave the world

Gone are those long lost minutes

where you unleashed your moorings,

when your screamed out your sorrows

and locked your mechanical door

without a master as the snow storm's

marshal lawyer, a colonel clinking

his dry cup for a salute of sunless,

derisive, jarring melodies unheard,

the fire of the gut-rotten belly,

rip-ribbed fat, toothless and mean

in his oily flannel cotton shirt:

O, who is chuckling now, you cheating

Chubby Checker! We are free of you.

Free! And winter is a dead and past

as we feel well enough

to start worrying again

about what is normal,

as our eyes, moist in emotion,

push out the main street iron

ions of ancient dirt, seeking

to join the information flow

of geese, buzzards and eagles

flying north into the blindness

of the king, the queen, the jesters

jeering in the crowd, the black crows,

re-entering the Earth's atmosphere

to regain unearthly sanity

Last Water

The last drop

of water in Meteor City,

a parched hole in the desert

with a few mobile homes, maybe,

echoes of steel pedal romantics

in action, still seeking factions

to fight off Black Mesa coal companies,

joining other drops of water, rising,

to make or break into clouds,

cloud computing sympathies

and waving into grains:

Behold, the national sacrifice areas,

the place once known as First Water,

a ten-thousand-year walk by the third drop,

pushed through sandstone beneath concrete

sidewalks in the city, good to the last cop,

wearing a belt secretly glowing of uranium,

coal and waters pressurized through slurry pipes

by chicken hawks, or, black parking lot crows

big-breasted, looking slightly tasty,

as we walk home, desolate and lonely

back into the wilderness, two Pahannas

who pretended to understand for a decade

the pain of sacred springs drying up,

the kachinas dancing down to mathematic,

automated figures at your cash registers,

ya, you, you know who, how do you do,

say halleluja, as you carve into up into space masks

inserting pictures of the glassy knolls, hogan holes,

Merlin's magic wands to the center of the crystalline earth

The fourth drop of water, a drip down the throat,

issued through a rubber tube, hardly enough

to rush down the rocks of the red desert stream,

the drying heat of seventy-mile-per-hour winds

jack ripping, ripping jack

over the navel of the fourth world

powered by the Navajo generational station,

the dynamite that broke the highway,

the lions of commerce, roaring and erect,

bread bears, steel-eyed salmons from far away

dreaming up plumes of steams, making cloud,

making raining, falling onto the earth again,

the fifth drop of water, most likely your last,

video punked across the nation, one last drop

of coffee on the tongue for salvation,

one last drop for the animals of immigration,

a red dirt crust of crunchy sourdough

for order on the border, an entire stitch

of moleculed waters for a set of signals

for the matrix, a crowd, a crisis swamping

into a last great flood, for one last river boat,

one last drop of ink on a single sheet of paper,

rippling now into a red stratos curtain

like a flug hung upside down across

the Little Colorado River Valley

as the national canyon anthem sounds off:

O say can you tame the raw dead Sainty Clause,

O disbelievers, O, pain relievers of our kitchen sink,

the green tinge of tornadoes, predicted by the hour,

moving north almost fast as the brown soldiers

on the Hopi mesas holding back the end of the world,

wearing the many coasts of winter, still, in the mourning chill,

cast off in spring around the small hogan rooms

in a confusion about the new currents,

closing the roads in the Dust Bowl daze

of explosive gusts, that last water

summed up by sweet sugar fairies

draining into hot choco-lates

in the nasty Nestles

of your no longer say so,

into Perrier bottles

for celebrities,

public relations

people fibbing up

Fijis tipped

for industry,

petting down,

your last puddle,

your last well,

your last water

stolen and sold

in the grocery

store

aisle,

and kept in

in the phaoroh's urn

of our mutual

no more

say

so

Survival in the Spring

The fool moon

is an unjust cliche

passing directly overhead

and I've ached out of exhaustion

so many times the tired millions

of meteoric terrors, media-mad errors,

the pa-rum-pum-pum of Christmas,

now long behind us, is only the echo

of a car crash we never witnessed,

only heard in the siren song

beneath the loud roar of daily trains

passing along the highway,

and our soft whispers

muted in each minute of distance

remains as a glassy tranquility

in the lunar space, the ice nine

of the night sky, as the dust swirls

into a sound so lonely,

a solace at the end of March,

we thank the great sky

for no more murder

The white stripe of the local skunk,

confused as the buds on trees,

in unending misunderstanding

of the new weather patterns,

limbs freezing then thawing,

chilling over again, forgotten

as the breeze, teasing towels

of numerous cold showers

for all seasons in a single day,

twenty-four-hour revelations

of the mountain lion warning us

with a growl in the Gaian solace

at midnight into the back-stepping

mystery of the morning, cars running

late, buses running late, trucks,

running furious late to avoid garbage beasts,

cement mixers awake, alive as thirsty ants,

churning up into government, then corporations,

into bellicose budgies happy to pave the world

Gone are those long lost minutes

where you unleashed your moorings,

when your screamed out your sorrows

and locked your mechanical door

without a master as the snow storm's

marshal lawyer, a colonel clinking

his dry cup for a salute of sunless,

derisive, jarring melodies unheard,

the fire of the gut-rotten belly,

rip-ribbed fat, toothless and mean

in his oily flannel cotton shirt:

O, who is chuckling now, you cheating

Chubby Checker! We are free of you.

Free! And winter is a dead and past

as we feel well enough

to start worrying again

about what is normal,

as our eyes, moist in emotion,

push out the main street iron

ions of ancient dirt, seeking

to join the information flow

of geese, buzzards and eagles

flying north into the blindness

of the king, the queen, the jesters

jeering in the crowd, the black crows,

re-entering the Earth's atmosphere

to regain unearthly sanity

Survival in the Spring

The fool moon

is an unjust cliche

passing directly overhead

and I've ached out of exhaustion

so many times the tired millions

of meteoric terrors, media-mad errors,

the pa-rum-pum-pum of Christmas,

now long behind us, is only the echo

of a car crash we never witnessed,

only heard in the siren song

beneath the loud roar of daily trains

passing along the highway,

and our soft whispers

muted in each minute of distance

remains as a glassy tranquility

in the lunar space, the ice nine

of the night sky, as the dust swirls

into a sound so lonely,

a solace at the end of March,

we thank the great sky

for no more murder

The white stripe of the local skunk,

confused as the buds on trees,

in unending misunderstanding

of the new weather patterns,

limbs freezing then thawing,

chilling over again, forgotten

as the breeze, teasing towels

of numerous cold showers

for all seasons in a single day,

twenty-four-hour revelations

of the mountain lion warning us

with a growl in the Gaian solace

at midnight into the back-stepping

mystery of the morning, cars running

late, buses running late, trucks,

running furious late to avoid garbage beasts,

cement mixers awake, alive as thirsty ants,

churning up into government, then corporations,

into bellicose budgies happy to pave the world

Gone are those long lost minutes

where you unleashed your moorings,

when your screamed out your sorrows

and locked your mechanical door

without a master as the snow storm's

marshal lawyer, a colonel clinking

his dry cup for a salute of sunless,

derisive, jarring melodies unheard,

the fire of the gut-rotten belly,

rip-ribbed fat, toothless and mean

in his oily flannel cotton shirt:

O, who is chuckling now, you cheating

Chubby Checker! We are free of you.

Free! And winter is a dead and past

as we feel well enough

to start worrying again

about what is normal,

as our eyes, moist in emotion,

push out the main street iron

ions of ancient dirt, seeking

to join the information flow

of geese, buzzards and eagles

flying north into the blindness

of the king, the queen, the jesters

jeering in the crowd, the black crows,

re-entering the Earth's atmosphere

to regain unearthly sanity

U.S. Truth

Tennis shoes tied together,

pink as sin, high on a wire,

a signal for the Tricky Dick boys

building prisons for prophets,

profits for polarities,

warehouses for secret cocaine

futures, hemp rope for hangings,

skull stems hammered on,

amped up for echoes

on the dark side of our

personal moons, rigid codes,

cancer loads, injustices on loan,

cowboys as cash cows for the state,

sharks driving spaceships on wheels,

for long thin men in red beanies

surfing the parking lots

in the pre-dawn shadows

with silver flashlights

poking their hungry noses

into snow-cold super trucks and cars,

breaking into the momentary

silence of your homes,

your minds, your memories,

your anguish and your regrets,

robbing the cold, bringing the heat,

the cops needing capital who will never leave

you alone, tapping your computers and phones,

crashing through the triple-bolted door

without even a false premise

to excuse unconstitutional thrones

of mislabelled power, big pharma towers,

out of pocket by the hour, side effects

diminishing mere disease, minutes of unease,

seconds for wishing, cell phones and dirty dishes,

inquisitional questions, shouting for answers,

stun-gunning you, with photo radar gone fishing,

fast as bad acid to put you on the floor:

Mi Madonna, mi amore ... Master lock and more:

Saint Peter, Saint Jesus, Saint Brahma,

Saint Paul, here are your chains

when you've done nothing at all

~

Job reports, private sectors:

Do you know who is zeroing in

on your pointy-headed vectors?

Optimistic in Boston, oil lagged

humorists no longer counted,

numberless in their lack of hope,

better suited for the task

of being chosen as common men,

women or the demiurge Pope

with three-fingers left

in the checking account,

traumatized, shocked,

in an emotional sock

after missing one

car payment, hung up on,

electronically challenged,

renting out their houses,

living in their parents'

living rooms ... Scared

in the so-called economic

boom, victims of the new genocide,

staying afloat in the telemarket,

smiling in defiance of the waves

still being felt in the cafeteria

of woes from the Bush administration,

driven by force, needing to rob banks

to see a movie: Might as well

daydream yourself up a trip

to Budha-happy Thailand, half-assed Hawaii,

or go on an economic mission to Dubai

to attend a conference on smoke detectors,

or follow the Byzantine route

to the nearest mountain to shout

back down onto the city, loud

economic defectors burdened by self-pity,

divided and conquered, with no bacon

in the meat locker,

beaten up and bothered,

drowning in an ark safety net

woven in wool, feeling like a fool

when knocked off the bar stool

by the sound of car doors

slammed beneath the snow-filtered sky

~

See the slap-happy weather man

giddy as the foggy beach bubbles

bobbing up from the sea,

telling you this is what happens

when the Earth shakes

like jello, from waves

generated by an angry sun

and autos often gunned

like weaponized engines

and coal-fire plant managers,

panting, choking and smoking,

always on the run

He beams, slick in breathless excitement,

donning his Columbia storm gear made in China:

This is what happens when the cyclone is on fire

This is what happens when ... he smiles again

safe and warm in some studio in hot-Lanta

We walked through a whiteout to get online last night,

took care of the tactics and logistics and uploads

of information to stay alive, God gave us groceries

and we laughed our way home ...

This what happens when bed bugs get into your bloomers

This is what what happens as science is dissed by boomers

This is what happens when the haboob blows on through

in desert lands assumed to not know that word is new

This is what happens as the pine cones, white hot in the flow

lava-red resources gone matter to smoke, black to white

as reservoirs air dumped from the sky, a helicopter high

This is what happens when the perfect storms

put a smile in the meteorologist's eye,

focused on the hocus pocus of ratings,

selling fear, channelized, a funnel of money,

a spectator sport

Can we watch the Weather Channel, honey?

This is what happens when storm kings, tornado chasers

are raised to the status of rock stars, voyeurs on video,

This is what happens when a tri-state tornado

last for four hours and a physician isn't sought

for immediate attention: Talk about the weather

with your doctor, then duck for cover

This is what happens when contrarian tunes

are set into permanent rotation, prone to the cold,

odd currents, coming off the Rockies, the Himalayas

and warm air rushes up from southern seas

This is what happens when both sides

are right and we turn left, hence,

the confusion over convection

and spinning over the counter,

clockwise, compulsive in the chase

Ask your doctor if it's cost effective

to go around, understanding climate change

to drive around pursuing a cyclone

This is what happens when we can't

remember tornadoes don't occur

year-round, caught on fire,

a swirling flame in the sky

We rushed down the stairs,

the morning clouds burning red,

Christmas green, dumb and mean,

the southwestern clouds coming,

complete, the prophecy,

the burning bush,

the finger of God

This is what happens

when your military dad

goes tisk, tisk

as we prayed

lying flat

as beetles

beneath a table,

embarassed

in the basement

~

New job available on Craigslist!

Title: Friend

Requirements: Reliable transportation;

female preferred but men

will be considered if applicant

is willing to have an immediate

sex change at his own expense.

Pay (none) not negotiable.

No phone calls please.

~

Talk radio is telling me

it's an enormous problem,

short term, long term,

in any terms: The moment?

Forget about it

The fast, harsh mouthpiece

for the American Enterprise Institute

sounds shrill, vicious, wolfie

in his roars and I imagine

compassionate conservatives

rooting for curbs against

further acts of sexual violence

toward the corporation domanatrix,

the congressmen perking off pages,

but my ear can only bend so far

and my dial in, so puny, my voice,

wanting to call for stripping naked,

and left on the street for seething

about the foul taste of stale bread,

can barely eek out the strength

to cut through the ice

Forget about it

~

You tell me at the morning bell

that life is just a living hell

I wake up thinking

isn't that swell

You tell me that until we divest ourselves of the cell phone chatter,

the gas, the pigs, the memories that don't matter,

the clouds will keep coming into our home,

and the nation, reduced to dividends,

won't leave us alone

My Cherios crunch to loud

you say, my breath is bad

now go away, my tongue is rough

as I run away to a safer

place where the sun isn't so gray

Tough love is a two way street

gotta get something better to eat

Tough love is a two way street

Gotta find a smile where can I find it

Tough love is a two way street

Starving me for your touch

well, I don't mind it

Tough love is a two way street

I roam

Coming home you are nice again

I say honey can I have some sin

then we do it all over again

Your agony babe is the sea I swim

Lovin' you is a double-edged sword

Not even Shakespeare man

could find the right words

Cause

Tough love is a two way street

gotta get something better to eat

Tough love is a two way street

Gotta find a smile where I can find it

Tough love is a two way street

Starving me for your touch

well, I don't mind it

Tough love is a two way street

I roam

Motor mouth, motor mouth

is a weird adjustment

I give you my crazy

I give you my judgment

My motor mouth, motor mouth

is my truth for tougher men

Motor mouth, motor mouth

shakes you brakes you as you run away

Tough love is the street I roam today

Late at night is make-up sex night

We do it again by you damned daylight

ain't no way outta this circle I find

aint no way to just be kind, Uncle Sam,

until we all unload this big bad jam

You pull in the shades to warn

me of fight, I'm Joan of Arc

love and death's eternal delight

Maybe some flowers would

be all right

Cause

Tough love is a two way street

Learn to live with a pocket of change

Tough love is a two way street

Gotta find a smile wherever you don't it

Tough love is a two way street

Hoping for your touch

is what keeps me going

Tough love is a two way street

I roam

Tough love, babe

Tough love tough love

tough love is the two-way street

we all, but just a few, roam

How We Lost the Drug War

"Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth."

~ Will Rogers

Tennis shoes tied together,

pink as sin, high on a wire,

a signal for the Tricky Dick boys

building prisons for prophets,

profits for polarities,

warehouses for secret cocaine

futures, hemp rope for hangings,

skull stems hammered on,

amped up for echoes

on the dark side of our

personal moons, rigid codes,

cancer loads, injustices on loan,

cowboys as cash cows for the state,

sharks driving spaceships on wheels,

for long thin men in red beanies

surfing the parking lots

in the pre-dawn shadows

with silver flashlights

poking their hungry noses

into snow-cold super trucks and cars,

breaking into the momentary

silence of your homes,

your minds, your memories,

your anguish and your regrets,

robbing the cold, bringing the heat,

the cops needing capital who will never leave

you alone, tapping your computers and phones,

crashing through the triple-bolted door

without even a false premise

to excuse unconstitutional thrones

of mislabelled power, big pharma towers,

out of pocket by the hour, side effects

diminishing mere disease, minutes of unease,

seconds for wishing, cell phones and dirty dishes,

inquisitional questions, shouting for answers,

stun-gunning you, with photo radar gone fishing, 

fast as bad acid to put you on the floor: 

Mi Madonna, mi amore ... Master lock and more:

Saint Peter, Saint Jesus, Saint Brahma,

Saint Paul, here are your chains

when you've done nothing at all

The Librarians of Chiron

Running the place

like the see-yi-aye

she fills the Void

with restrictions,

a curious intradiction

and curio cards

of information

for my memory decay

My new library card, plastic and eternal,

is withheld, kidnapped by civilization,

held back from the fool, the child, the saint,

due to the sanctity of property over people,

information over sanity, the know-nothings

of gardens long gone, restrictions and restraint,

of the fool and the child and the saint

Sitting flat on her

officious frame

time ticking off

as the taxpayers

run on by seeking

out ruinous rumors

kept in a data-bank urn

Unlearn! Logic is a sequence

for digits on her personal

fussy budget spool

as she teaches me

her golden rule

running unevenly

for gasoline-mad marines

and payday loan Paulines

seeking out academic assignments

about banks and bombers,

bombs and U.S. Treasury robbers,

about skirts that sway, tweets

of high flying interest,

planets gone sad, asteroids

in full bloom, octopus arms,

The New York Times, O, woe,

there is a suckerfish upon the People!

Upon picture books, bar-coded,

featuring western Iowa churches

rebuilt every decade or so

by mountain-built storms

thrown east, wrecking their steeples,

by tornadoes feeding upon the People!

O, cookbook of comfort foods,

converted into kitchen-witch actions ...

O, four-year-old compact disks

emotions emo autodidactions!

Hear me. Hear Me!

The sun will come, each day ...

Hear me! Burning the shadow off

the mountain as I boil, too hot,

just too damn hot overdue

her library card denial transactions ...

And this is why the library lady

is so damn mean to me:

For if I am flesh she is bone

in a world that's all on loan

The Sniper

He lived fierce

but not long enough

to clear out

the elegance

hidden beneath

his cloud, red

as the liver,
silent as a sniper
in Laos

He used all of his hearing

on Deep Purple,

the Allman Brothers

and trains rolling

both ways along

Route 66

moving nightly, daily,

always east and west

for the resupply ...

Semper Fi! Semper Fi!

That was his religion

after the Catholic

do and die ...

His duty was his

faith and he loved

defended even his wife

in death

He lived his life,

left nothing to spare

didn't waste a thing

for the resupply

II

We made this place up. You were used,

brought here to recite Faulkner,

to champion great beasts from the sea,

thwarting the diamond-hearted vistas

of America, sold, bought, traded ...

No, another scene: Closer, a yard

of broken concrete, cowards,

laughing, chasing some old lady,

down the road ... No, closer, closer!

You called the police car. You!

Now my nerves are jangled

and the ambulance is gone

and the TV news crew

never arrived like it does

in the movies and the

music is the reason

why I cannot live

without you.

Closer? Can't be. Just can't.

I mean, it's too close, too soon.

The curtains, full of holes,

like a planetarium at mid-day

of endless siestas: My god,

you stayed here with me?

You endured this tormented

corner of trains going in both

directions and audible

rattlesnakes ripping

through the night

and automobile drivers

who just don't get it

and never will?

Don't you see who I am?

I am a man who cannot

even think about leaving

because if I do, it will be

the end of music for me

and I will have to walk down

the straight without your

sweet warm palm

inside my hand and man,

that's just to close, woman

You got no right, just no right

to shed such salty tears

on my brow as we hide,

trembling, behind walls

stained by forgotten

details, jagged angry

mad loafers who once

made these roadside

spaces home

III

In the stillness

only gamblers

light their fires

In the forests

of time, money

where no choppers go

and Captain Napalm

can't command,

the likes of me

always in demand

One-eyed fire bird arts

at the secret command

you'll feel no detection

when your dark heaven

is my cross-hair selection

Semper Fi! Semper Fi!

Nixon called

and I denied

never knew a camera crew

I fought, you died,

that's all we knew

IV

Covert, overt, bread crumbs for crows,
with vows on the dangers of falling in love
over roses and medical records,
building enemies golden bridges to escape from,
burning down the lines of supplies leading into Vietnam,
sucking in the agent orange, dirty in black and green face paint:
All of these things he did for you, or so he thought ... well, anyway,
did what he was taught, which was the honor onto itself

When rising blood bruises arose along the arm, he kept covert,
secret in the protections of you, again!
And when I took out the trash and got in the scuffle
with another of your walking wounded,
he urged on the fight like Johnny Rebel
and later we all apologized and hugged and tried to move on,
but we never did, never do, because of the ripples
now running in tsunamis across the seas

When he came home he was told to stand down
when the Hari Krishna spat on him at LAX:
Must have been like, relax, soldier, stand down, man,
just stand down, keep it quiet, to yourselves,
because it never ends ...
Never will

The'Sun King'

Should We De-Fund Congressional Health Care and Other Perks?: Most assuredly, it would even the playing field ... By Douglas McDaniel ...  http://mythvinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/lessons-in-social-dysfunctions-101.html

Memory Echoes Ink: And now for the latest from Nickson Bluffs, Iowa, where the hum hummers at the diner are reading their latest "Chuck Grassley is Always Greener" tweets to the low-register, piped-in tune "Sweet Home Alabama" ... By Jaimie Ondrea Dunn ... 

http://memoryechoesink.blogspot.com/ 

Interview with the Mr. Nothing is Sacred Architect: "Mr. MaGoomeister, just groaned. It had been a slow starting day, due to complications due to the way one shower head lined up with the tile, considerations well beyond Mr. Nobody's talents or interest ..." By Douglas McDaniel ...

http://radiofreearizona.blogspot.com 

Many Days in the Life of the 'Real-Time Poet' and Other Notices ... http://www.examiner.com/places-and-faces-in-scottsdale/douglas-mcdaniel

 Other Publishing around the Realm, with a Very Nice Portrait Done on an Old French King ... This Week Under the Sun ... http://thisweekunderthesun.blogspot.com

Plowshares

Eat, breathe, sleep, dream,

so when we wake 

we can face the cold wind

burning of death,

brave and bold; 

Let those who find

the merchants of fear

behind their backs turn

to face the paranoid fringe

down to fire off memos

for one-thousand-year laws

to assuage disbelief

in the disinformation

 that we are separate, not One: 

Let the dawn rise

for the information farmers,

the witch doctors, the divine women,

the primal poets, the horsemen

melting their brands into plow shares,

the cosmic truckers and spinning ballerinas;

Lead these bright sons and daughters

to contentment beneath

the new Sun of Creation

and then, let them eat, breathe,

sleep and dream again beneath

the Old Moons of the imagination

Resolution Revolution

Nobody is going to rob me of my joy,

not even here in this deepest and coldest

of winters, this dark place of toothless

tormentors, of mouthpieces spitting teeth

of fights you lost, howling mad, decades ago,

not your droning, green or black helicopter

sad, money grabbing, cash registers of pain,

clinking in metallic perfect motormouth

mullahs of intense, sugar-free MSG,

sputtering a doormat out for me,

as if spirit were a mere rumor

created by the machine-heart

doctors on the twin days

of my Capricorn birth,

somnambulatin' an echo

of my perfect ear

for the loving

beat of your heart,

true art, not the furies

of hell-bent masters

of enclosures

cast in the bitter

pounding of hammers

intended to wound

me, not the ever-growing

radars of fear, nor

the trenchant statistic,

nor the static

clinging to your

clanking chains

of the dissenting

voice that believes

it can keep me

from speaking

love's name ...

Nope.