War
War
War!
Roar
Roar
  Roar!
No more
No more
  No.
     More.

“Lord knows Gods come and go so quick it’s like lightning,
      and lord knows I’ve received my slings and arrows all in silence.
   Don’t quote me about love being nat’ral or rent being heaven-sent;    
they isn’t and looord no I ain’t gonna preach the almighty’s reliance.
     The friendless creep of hours into centuries can be frightening;
  I’m just enlightened enough to know there’s no such thing
                   as enlightenment.”

read from bottom to top*


down
   us
     bring
            to
               try
           they
when
        smoke
   like
     rise
We'll

The shells are singing
holy songs now—oceans whistle through
their concert holes. ‘Holes drilled by predators,’
the seashore sings to me.

And I’m reminded there’s
so much more ancient than man.
So much that can never be written down,
for words are the limitations of our knowledge

—not its end.
And there should be something more
but really, how does one write what happened
with the seashells whistling by the seashore?

That soft jingly music
  of snow hitting water—
my birthday

There’s that smell of smoke again
my neighbor burning leaves across the lot,
     brown leaves worthy of being burned simply because they fell
(and because they’ll rot his idea of a yard).
And it’s brown to black and then gray
     as all things fall.

And there is the sound of smoke, too
wheezing over the t.v. and radio.
Smoke and sirens (both mythical and mechanical)
    as if humanity’s a ribbon caught in a blaze.
Half the globe is burning to be free
        waking to turn the light of the sun into the sugar of their lives.
And the other half is snoring through the haze.
     Generations snoring for generations
fanning the flames
  as they wonder why they burn.

     Looking up I see with a Mover’s clarity
this smoke that blinds the sky
       stings our lives.
  And maybe that’s why they burn,
(this smoke that rises from the hillsides of history)
    to block out the sun,
to make men crazy with a human eclipse
with carbon
   because the fire inside them won’t let those free blue eyes
drift by without this little scarification of smoke.
A gray river flowing toward the sky
              for the live and let die.
  
         This smoke that fills my mouth,
that leaves its bitterness in me,
    does it burn dreams as it burns through flesh?
Will it burn all the way to the seed?
We wonder whether dreams shrivel or if they explode
    like something thawed on its way to the sun.
            Or do they, as the expression goes, simply go up in smoke?
like some slippery eel disappeared in the deep deep dark.
   Do we smoke our dreams from two ends like a hapless fiend
or sip them with precious small breaths to drag out our sunsets?
      When the smoke is all gone
do we see the hoax of hoaxes?
  Or do we choke to death?

Did you hear?
The preacher met the mendicant who’s
proselytizing the end of the world Saturday.
They sat and had it out
on the steps in front of the old
  Baptist church on Main St., each idolizing
their poison with the wild green
all around, the preacher high
   on the holy steps
looking so divine above
the hobo in multicolored rags,
who scams and scams the plentiful
   from a gutter-pipe and who began
the conversation like this:

[snort]: “Go on father! Out with it,
what’d you call me out here for?”

“I hear you’re preaching the end of the world, Charlie—”
     he said putting a stick of gum to his lips,
     suddenly conscious of his stinking breath.
“Well, you’re scaring some of the lambs from my flock, they’re
       frightened beyond their wits—and I’m sorry but this is outrageous
I demand to know why, exactly why!
Because it’s interfering with my plans,
for Saturday I am preaching the End of Times.”

“Well… I believe it for a number of reasons,” said
  the hobo shouldering his heavy sign of doom.
“I mean things just keep getting worse,
no one gives to the needy anymore,
the poor are many, the golden skyscrapers high,
                            those huddling in the streets from gloom
     are praying to die—not to be saved,
   and their numbers just keep growing—
    the most double blessing that a
    man can get used to anything….
So I thought why not take advantage of my situation—
      I gotta make a meal!—
so I blew the crooked horn and said
that all ye minutemen of sin
                   and tradition are just killing
by rules that no one believes in….”
      
        Just then a fat green fly went buzzing by,
reminding Charlie of an old poem
“But tell me father, why do you
      believe in the End of
Times…?”

And the preacher in his dress took a deep sigh
wondering why it was everything had to die by Saturday:
“Well…. there are a number of signs.
         But mostly I think it’s morals—
nobody has any respect
    anymore, they open up
your door for you and say:
‘Excuse you!
        That’ll be five dollars.’
    How freewill
             turns and twists minds.
The youthful
          free, starving wanting-to-be artists—
       they won’t tithe in my church anymore,
they just throw me their books and say
with a blithe look that it’s not about
money anymore…
But what are they saying?
         Meanwhile they put a ****** hex
on all that is holy, have ***
     on all that’s white and pure.
Say that I’m an old man
            in a dress and that we’re all
blessed when really
     none of us are blessed—
say that the light is muddy
and the dark is clear, when really
I’m as clean as I can be, no foul
    smelling intentions in me!
         And that is how the End of Times will be!”

  And before the stench of death
could escape his breath, he put another
stick of gum to his lips.
  
   “Agreed.” said the hobo hastily….
     “But father, it doesn’t seem like
our lambs are really that different,
    it seems more to me that we’ve
been shepherding from the same flock
    and what we ought to do is take advantage
             of this unique situation.
                 Let’s put up a big round shining tent
                       on Main St. for Saturday
   and we’ll hold a dual End of Times—
       our lambs together, don’t you see?
      We’ll draw in twice the crowd
        twice the lot
twice the loud, crying fervor
believing in the burning streets.”
  
“Yes….. yes!” said the preacher with a corvine grin
and a turning coin in his eyes.
      “I get what you’re saying now. Yes, it’s genius—our preaching
together, one way or another, we’ll rake it in—and after the ending,
      when it’s all through….
Uh… [ahem] tell me, just one more thing—you do believe in the End of Times?”

“Sure, brother, sure…
        don’t you?”