The State of Disunion

The enthusiasm is electric to sell your social security. All of us are privileged to be placed in office by the voters we serve in a free and sovereign Irag. I returned you to the guiding light of liverty around the world. It is strong and it is free, so free, with hidden costs. I might have farted but I’m not sure.

They will get their due and their grandchildren in Wyoming, I mean Nevada. Free people pay less taxes, add a million new jobs, shoot their dead, and now we must add to these achievements. We will keep America the economic leader of the world unless the insurgents refuse to make tax relief permanent and cut the deficit in half.

We are closing the achievement gap between high school graduates. Especially Ethno Arctic American women under 4 feet 11 inches in height and over 220 pounds would not qualify. It’s all because of the frivolous asbestos claims and bad health decisions. They wouldn’t get sick if they would just meet their maker. I believe in associations for small business and frivolous activity that is not customer-based, including the needs they may have. I might have farted but I’m not sure.

Alternative sources of weird nucular energy will improve the health debate of our citizens. My budget believes in ethanol. Four years of debate – enough, enough. We need more independence from the freedom we have promised.

Our economy should not revitalize hard-working immigrants who would close the border to drug dealers and terrorists. They work so hard. I have a message for everyone past the age of qualifying. For younger workers, you have serious problems that will grow worse with time. It used to be sixteen to one, now it is two to one. It will be paying out more than it takes in. That is so negative. You cannot keep it afloat. By the time the world explodes, you will be massively, horribly, wretchedly in debt. It will collapse on your head like that statue of saddam.

You and I share a responsibility to review the benefits to the retirees. The free world depends on it if you are helpful or a terrorist. We must be guided by principles and leave that for another day. It is about dignity in your retirement, and it is gradual. The best way to reach that goal is voluntary yet personal. You will build your own nest egg at a better rate over and above the check you will receive in a personal account if you wish and the government can never take it away unless we want to.

Of course this a personal account. Not a private one. This is a broadly based expensive fund for young Americans. We will honor the values and take us a long journey into the twilight.

The weak and vulnerable will die and create a culture of life. This is a scientific advancement, for the benefit of others and human embryos grown for body parts. Ambitious. Aggressive. Men and women and stem cells are a constitutional souffle.

Our government is harsh and faith-based, along with gangs and those who respect violence. Gang life is an outreach to disadvantaged youth. The first lady will spearhead our efforts, because of HIV and besides, what else has she got to do? I might have farted but I’m not sure.

We must focus our efforts on our fellow citizens, to make sure we all have backgrounds we can use for DNA evidence for wrongful convictions. Competent lawyers must have people on death row by their side. Freedom from fear and the FBI and intelligence and biological first responders and homeland security. We thank them all.

Allies and friends are seeking weapons of mass destruction. We will keep on the offensive until we offend everybody. The tools we need are the tools we are. The war on terror, the dangers of time, in the long term, is peace. Human freedom is stalking America.

Brutal, free and independent nations that deflect their own cultures, momentum and women in Afghanistan that love the idea and the power and secretary of state Rice Krispies. I’m asking Congress for around 350 gabillion dollars. I can’t tell you why. But it is within reach, and we can achieve that goal.

And to the Iranian people I say tonite, “as you stand for liberty, we will make you the vital front in the war on terror, with our own children and grandchildren”. We are the real occupation, like sofia said to saddam Hussein here tonite. We will continue with these powerful myths of free elections. A small group of extremists can overturn the will of the people. We will write our own history as quickly as possible.

One name we honor is Byron Johannsen of Deblibits, MA who guards the border between Michigan and Canada. He will keep out the bad seed seeking to feed our tired poor people who work steadily for our rich people so they can take long well deserved vacations in a warm tropical climate of their choosing.

Our third responsibility as a major generation is freedom from fear of inaction. Broken up terror cells across the country have trained a billion first responders to make our homeland safer from the insurgents, without terrorists. We will stay offensive until the elections are over. Our service men and women have given so we must support their tools. Everyone around the world supports us in this. There are over 27 Kuwaitis and 4 young Turks with us in Iraq.

The French have to bring more hope and stinky fromage to a troubled region. The Russians elected 275 men and women who awoke to the sound of gunfire last Sunday. They voted together and when their candidate lost they killed him. (Applause.)

Byron Wendermoot of Cooterville Texas is here tonight. Both he and Janet Nolan are dead. (Sustained applause and cooterville cheers.) We have seen large threads of purpose and unite us. We’re all part of the values of that freedom, which lets each dream die, until it is fulfilled until one day our generation looks forward to the bumpy road.

The attack on our world has changed our world and set us on a new adventure like that of Huckleberry Finn or Flash Gordon or Buzz Aldrin, who all went down the Mississippi River and fished for fish and caught the gilled swimmers and ate them and that is what we know for sure. Thank you. I might have farted but I’m not sure. May god bless America.

Green Light Green

it’s so great i made the green light
or at least the last part of the yellow
thick jazzy molasses horsepower joy washes over me
its so great
the motor hums freely
as my very excellent coach
just tenderly tuned, sweetly serviced
rises once on the gentle camber
of the intersection, under the light
and falls once as I accelerate smoothly onward
hoping that this limitless green light world
and all this joy
all this thick jazzy molasses horsepower
will get me through
the next green light

without slowing down
man, metal, oxygen, photosynthesis
my bank balance, my mood
the blazing golden sun
pouring down thru the windshield
a distant switch
in the centralized traffic control computer
all working together in perfect green agreement

The Staging Area

what's missing in your life
- if I may be so bold -
is a good and proper staging area
don't just take clothes out of the dryer
fold 'em and put 'em away in their proper place
that's for losers
they belong in a good and proper staging area
an interim area, so to speak, where they lay
undefined and free for a while
waiting for a drawer or closet or body part
sometimes the wait is very long

we, and I mean the royal we, wouldn't be where we are today
without a staging area
to buffer the friction between
a machine and a closet
between the known and the unknown
earth and sky
action and inaction
and those places in between
like inertia, nebraska
languor, maine
torpor, ohio
keg, georgia
now and yet to be
we and they
and apathy, texas

cushion yourself, my good man
with a good and proper staging area
it will temper your quills
resonate your sexability
magnify the unknown
and hip-ta-phi your Christmas music

this free advice, this poem
is offered to you
from the depths of the staging area
don't file it away just yet
just let it hang loose for a while
still warm from the tumble dry

The UnderGod

I pledge allegiance
to the mags
at the checkout counter
Carmen Electra in a red white and blue thong
pulled down as low as you can shave
what a culture
it makes me want to be a better person
whatever is offered up
I want to fuck it
or buy it
kill it or eat it
and lately, salute it
it all makes me think
briefly, with commercial interruptions
and that's a good thing
I'm american
I forget myself
every thirty seconds

A Day in the Life of a Mountain Lion and a California Girl

She wakes in the morning, brushes her teeth and does her yoga
He rouses himself from sleep, opens his mouth and shrugs into a lazy catstretch, canines extended
She slips on her Nikes and walks to Starbucks with little barbells in her hands
He strolls to the creek for a drink and chews on the wheatgrass that grows on the bank
She considers the almond soy spirulina smoothie
but orders a double latte in a large glass
He pees round the the rim of his territory
She opens her philosophy book and wonders about the mind-body problem
and if she has free will
He licks his paws. He doesn't have a mind, so he has no problems.
She goes to her job at the non-profit institution,
fighting for endangered species
with fax machines and paper clips
He stares idly into a pool in the creek
and watches the snail darters flit to and fro
but is suddenly alert when a female appears
Hank comes by to flirt, but she rebuffs him with a smile
certain that he will redouble his efforts tomorrow
He grabs her by the scruff of the neck with his teeth
and does it doggy style
even tho they're feline
She takes off early and buys a loofa sponge, a lottery ticket
and non-indigenous vegetables for dinner
He scratches his hide against a loblolly pine
and gets fooled by a possum, outrun by a deer
and stood down by a wild dog.
She eats and watches Dances with Wolves on TBS
for as long as she can stand it and
grabs her bike as the sun goes down
He is hungry and ventures outside his territory for the first time
They are both headed for the same hills outside of town
where noone lives now but they used to
a fragment from an arrowhead crunches unseen beneath her wheel
he passes a rockface where there is a small picture etched by ancient flint
he does not recognize his own ancestor there
stalked by a stick figure with a spear
The moon is almost full tonite
she turns on her headlamp and thinks about her niece
and if she wants children of her own
He sits on a bluff and smells her upwind
She thinks about Hank and Kevin Costner
and notices the air flowing freely from her lungs
He leaps as she feels newly confident about her future
She tries to figure out what is happening as his jaws wrap around her skull
and suddenly they are joined
in the same wordless language of immediacy
She is not thinking and neither is he
Her friend is pulling at her heels
He is pulling at her head
She weighs 110 pounds after the Atkins diet
but so does he
Her friends beat him over the head with their bicycle pumps
they scream and throw rocks and dial 911 from cell phones that are hooked seamlessly thru the blinking tower on the next ridge
She hears his growl coming from his throat
down his fangs
and into the bones in her head
For some reason he does not let go.
No, not yet.

the fifth second

normally in five seconds
you can’t get the job done
but here at the rodeo
five seconds means you’re losin’

ice cubes and elizabeth taylor
don’t care about the rodeo
but they care about the kind of five seconds
a rodeo takes

in that kind of five seconds
ice cubes could get too warm
and elizabeth taylor could get too hot

if i were the bullrider
i’d spend the first second
talking the bull into throwing me
at elizabeth taylor

the second second
i’d spend flying flying

the third second i’d spend
making love to elizabeth taylor

the fourth second
i wouldn’t care
if the ice cubes melted or not

getting ready

glad you’re coming to town
but a day early?
what would jesus do
if god popped in ahead of time?

maybe the messiah's dining room table
disappeared under three feet
of last week’s silt
what if his garden looked like
a weed testing station
and what if his refrigerator
looked like mine did in college?
would he try to misdirect
the lord of all creation
the ubiquitous omniopunchibus
or would he strut his latest
mystical experience and ask god
wouldja like that scattered, smothered or to go?

maybe he would turn the loaves and fishes
into a chevron algonguin V-12 double dooper
he'd jump in the driver’s seat
without even opening the door
yeah jesus would open the throttle wide
and go for a long fast ride
before he speedolated back
to clean up

waitress from heaven

yes!
i’ll have the grapes and wine special
with some sleep and a cool pillow
some aloe and a sunburn aperitif
for dessert i’ll have an island
with some palm trees and sand
for my entrée please give me a line
that’ll work on you
and i’ll take that line to go
to go with you after work
yes everything is divine
no i don’t want the bill
just give me some wings
and a ride on the sky

oh! the web of life

the tourists go to africa
pay big bucks to watch lions slay gazelles
snap pictures of jackals and buzzards
wheeling over the remains
they speed through dung piles packing exotic spores
that in two months will bloom briefly from the treadmarks
into interesting incandescence

the tourists will dine on imported salmon
on a boat the crocodiles disregard
and they (the humans!) will talk excitedly
of the web of life
the oneness of it all
until the talk turns to politics
and how the world's going to hell
they will argue about what's right and what's wrong
and how much to tip the locals
whose brothers appear on the banks
armed with guns the tourists' fathers sold them
they (the locals!) are scared of the crocodiles
but shoot the tourists nonetheless
and the buzzards flock above
waiting to pluck out the eyeballs
after the leather wallets have gone
oh, life! The oneness of it all!
where everything causes
any one thing
and words point fingers towards the wake
and on the boat all the people are dead
the white people dressed in black
and the black people dressed in white
while those in camouflage go thru their pockets
a white girl is still breathing
she is raped by a black man who says
he is repaying a debt
but thinks of a movie star as he shoots his wad
she survives and gives birth
she turns all her hurt into love for her child
he grows up to be the first black president
of these united states
he goes to africa on a fact-finding mission
and sees a lion take down a gazelle
he is filled with the spirit of his unique human task
we are all one race! he says in the microphone
on the boat on the river at the source of the Nile
not scared of the genengineered crocodiles
while on one bank a white man holds him in the crosshairs
on the other bank a black man does the same
each wants him dead for different reasons
so they would say
and on the television all the people of the world
watch the assassination in beautiful slow-motion replay
bullets and witnesses merge in the middle of the president
all the fingers are pointed every which way
each accusation incorrect yet true
the flower of life blooming yet again
from the digital red hole in his chest
as the buzzards wheel above, tho
one turn higher than before

I would like to wrap my mind around my mind,
but I can't.
It's either too big, too slippery, or too fucked up. . .
. . . one of the two.

looking ahead with your favorite vegetable

looking ahead with your favorite vegetable

if the people
who never liked you
don’t show up
at your funeral
your funeral will
be a total drag
it'll be no fun at all
we couldn’t argue
about your life
and its myriad flaming failures

i made a wonderful
tape about the people
who don’t like you
they were so chatty
it’s got a ton
of painstaking crap
about you

didn’t you make a tape
all about your zucchini farm
and how to ship
zucchini so it won’t get squashed?

why don't we
since we're still
both alive
look at those
tapes now?
we could get really gassed
and finally admit with a toast
that you really weren’t such a bad guy
I’m looking forward to it

without this

without the space between our ears, we would have no
• motorcycles

without a larynx, we would have no
• taxes

without a medulla oblongata, we would have no
• arguments

without cheez whiz, we would have no
• crackers

without a bunch of arcadians in a swamp, we would have no
• new orleans

without new orleans, we would never
• sweat confetti

without mexico, we would have no
• mexican women

without pheromones, we would have no
• rhinoplasty

without a frontal lobe, we would have no
• difference of opinion

without the us treasury, we would have no
• change for the bus

without the isle of langerhans, we would have no
• pancreatic jazz

without webster or roget, we would have no
• synonyms for skank

• without texas, we would have no
alamo or drunken hell-bent bravado

• without tears, we would have no
metaphors for flowers

without laughter
you'd have nothing to laugh about

• without us
you wouldn’t have this poem

so yeah, let’s get behind the mind
because once you have it
you really pretty much need it!

we ran out of cantaloupe

the cantaloupe
what a boring subject
it’s giving me a headache
it’s the last thing
i want to talk about
i really hate it
if we didn’t have cantalouspes
we wouldn’t hafta
figure all this crap out
then we could just
have fun all the time
until we ran
out of money

multiple choice poem

the japanese have a word, hanami
we who get by on ingrish
we have no single word to fit hanami
what does it mean?
1. a mexican word that means “lodestar bodestar”
2. when a bee gets pollen on its ass
3. that which can’t be said in one word
4. I want to hold your egg mcmuffin
5. none of the above
OK, number five, “none of the above”
happens to correct
perhaps because
the Japanese meant something elegant
perhaps beyond
the scope of this poem

hanami means flower viewing
hanami
elegant enough
to stretch the scope
of these multiple choices

Erratadati Roy stared down his catcher and shook off the sign for a curveball. Sure the world was going to hell, but noway was he going to throw this meatball a junk pitch. He was in Rome, Georgia, two weeks out of the Inter-Asia Development League (.025 era for the Bombay Bombers), and here he was in the class A promised land (temporary resident alien work visa) facing a burger fed tobacco spewing hayseed with a 3-2 count in the bottom of the seventh (back end of an abbreviated doubleheader) protecting a 10-8 lead with two runners on base (not his fault). He was gonna strike this motherfucker out, so help him shiva. He called upon the head of the hindu pantheon to help gird his loins for the upcoming pitch, even though he considered himself an adherent of the even-tempered Buddha, but seeing as how the Buddha didn't have no pantheon, and (also and to boot) the situation called for a distinct and sudden disruption of his serene equanimity, he figured he needed a little extra juice, and he didn't care from whence it came. He waited till the catcher rolled his eyes and set a single digit down between his legs and then he (Erratadati Roy - "Errah!" to his snickering teammates) stood up strong, grabbing two seams cross the ball in his glove, and with a final glance towards second base (and, coincidentally, towards Mecca, even tho he didn't give a shit) hurled the ball towards home plate to a destiny he knew was predetermined but hoped would be strike three. It was a good pitch, but a microsecond before the thud of ball against leather and the confirmation of his amalgamated cultural zeitgiest came the crushing crack of ball against ash and a mild "Fuck" uttered by Roy as his head swiveled to mimic the arc of the ball headed out to straight centerfield. There were two outs, and he could tell from the sound of the contact, the speed with which the ball soared into the sky, and the general tenor of his own recent fortunes, that this would go right to the fence, and that he had no idea if he would ride out with the win or be saddled with the loss. He watched the white ball slow as it reached its apex against the night sky and as it seemed to stop still in brilliant equipoise he suddenly became aware that all 1,327 pairs of eyeballs in the Coca-Cola Rome Braves Municipal Stadium were locked in with his, watching the ball as it began its descent, those eyeballs directly hooked to brains suddenly quiescent and silent and joined in the common spectacle of watching something inevitable but not yet apparent, and in that moment, Erratadati Roy (who, he quickly admitted to himself, had never deeply considered the application of buddhist truths to the vagaries of baseball) felt his mind suddenly snap free from its self-reflective gaze, and found himself in the extremely unusual, salubrious and panoramic state which he immediately recognized yet reflexively (to his credit) refused to identify as that condition which the noble Gautama had termed, in many unimpeachable translations, as "detachment".

target practice



we shot a film
in philosophical black
we shot it full
of philosophical holes
we shot gnostic smoke in the lens
it smoldered frame by frame
we shot film
chock-full of stars and pop-up targets
we shot film
as if film and philosophy were free
we shot clocks
like there’s no tomorrow
and spent the time
shooting the night away
we shot clint eastwood
bit players and slim pickens
we tamed horses
burned mesquite logs
guns blazing
riding high
across a howling bullet moon
over the roiling ribbon
of the rio grande

fat gobs of money

my bitter mood suddenly mitigated
by the unexpected receipt of 59 million dollars
i paid my neighbor 2 million in quarters
with instructions to disappear
by lunchtime
and told him lunchtime is
when i say it is

enough money
to do whatever the fuck I wanted
like buy a printing press
and the treasury secretary
and make more money
fat gooey dripping gobs of it
so i did
I printed fat gobs of money
i gave all my friends 59 million dollars each
we had a big party
exactly like the big parties we had before
only better, brighter
because money buys arc lights, exotic hallucinogens
and that certain “sheen”

but mainly because dollars make a great
bonfire
great fat gobs of burning money
sparking floating blazing
riding the heat of their own conflagration
curling crispy into the nite

english poem made with words we know in español
mi salsa es su salsa
aqui está una tortilla
con queso, baybee
we mango a tortilla con salsa rhumba meringue
we drink cerveza and mas tortilla con tango
now more beer, more beer now
we do this every day, it is good
this table, this mesa, is very strong
many beers and many tortillas
and you and I are tu y yo
on this table, this mesa, baybee
with cold cerveza in the frosty bucket
I like it a lot, this tableau is muy strong
Gusto con gusto

we just figured out why human beings are so content to waste time
1.) Because it saves them from the horror of doing something useful.
2.) Because they think they're god, so what's the rush?
3.) Time is so utterly priceless! And it's irreplaceable!
4.) Time wastes them.
5.) Who cares?
6.) The good news is – you don’t have to be this way.
7.) The bad news is – you are

Don't worry, it's only 11:11

random notes, annual national night workers’ appreciation day

shouldn’t we appreciate national night workers
tonight ?
let’s write a poem
in the daytime
while nightworkers sleep in the sun
that’s nice
that’s special
special enough
for a national nightworkers appreciation day

herbert kornfeld is sleeping
after his graveyard shift
down at world hq’s import export wholesale conversation warehouse
snoring gently through well-earned
sun bright
sun day
dreams
a poem written on his behalf
dark infrared poignant pictures
he may never know he’s in it

let’s celebrate at Daddy Z’s
pickin’ parlor on the edge of town
fingers flicking frets faster than sound
the long appalachian howl
of east tennessee
shatters
a staccato blur
flashing the nightworkers
into still stanzas
verbal strobes constructing
visible profundity at Daddy Z’s
pickin’ parlor on the edge of town

nightworkers (not dayworkers)
guzzle booze, nicotine, possibility theory
gasoline, billiard games, rank speculation
night things belong to the nightworkers
a slow warp speed
speeding toward
arc lights on Gastonia Avenue

you get more than you bargain for, and less, at night
whispers echo louder longer, howling in the hangtime
clocks slow down before they stop
at closing time
but don’t we all
we and the nightworkers
streaming into a scrumptious dawn
as if every night
is national night workers’ appreciation day
they deserve a nightworkers nightwords poem
and we’re just the guys to give it to them

by the boy photons