“Indian burn?
Let me show ya”
He
assaulted my arm, my mind
at once

Cannot protest
or change the scream

of blinding stairwell-

Double-cross

Descent 
of knowing

I will avenge 

will take revenge

at my first… 

blinded spurt of rage
Rebirth as renegade



No age

ever!
forgets!

Smokey the Bear tried
to warn us
not to play with fire
nor matches
Never any carelessness
so near the flames
A Bunsen's burner
licks the glass
cesium
rubidium

I listened
till the dare
undid the bear
Consumed us
with its hunger
for the science
and the gases
instability
of it

Flicked us out the window
of a sunny day
Cricket dry
the grass
Knee deep in *** butts
in litter
by the underpass

Flames trespass
explode beyond us

You might be surprised by what people read
at the kitchen table
in the evening
with dinner to the side

As for where to die?  
At the kitchen table
like my neighbor Betty—

slumped over her newspaper
arms above her white and lonely head.

Halloween at Camp LeJuene

So those storage tanks
the ads of late-night-- all talkin' about
some thirty-five years a-leaking like...
some aplastic benzene-apocryphal river

Horror!
tastes like chemo Kool Aide
forever in the mouth
washing over parade route
seeping into boots and wombs
of cadets who can't hear the music
over a child's laughter-- ever

over failing livers
lined up like lawyers marching
onto glyphosate green
to Parkinsonian cheers
to Taps-solos echoeimg off the stone-
of mind and memory

Flags!
Flapping-angry!

“No (wo)man left behind
on the multiple ways to myeloma
Miscarriages
of justice!

A silence waiting

an eternity
of tiny infant cries
emptying....
into Love Canal

There will be...
NO JUSTICE!

Only billions set aside
for funeral-ic devastation

“Significant compensation”
--being read in a woman's face
in a woman's voice

“...suffering from any of these....
after drinking the water at Camp Le Juene”

at the hands-down
heads-turned
greased palms of

     silence

being owned
by military-corpporate
“channels”
of secrecy

...of Pharma-to-government
medical-backwaters
laundered to-governments
of banana republics

Mercenery chemicals
Medicine with missile launchers
strewn
among military over-runs of...
…of high power rifles,
night goggles, and F-15s

What am I missing here?

...about the rubbery clots and myocarditis?
Has it finally come round to us?

How could I not see!

not recall?
How many years ago--
since I could hear?

the rapid fire!
“The toxic Leaks!”

“...suffered from any of these...”
...feeding tube terrors
Time's tumors
downgrade to errors
deferred...
Now beside the grief as amputees
--take the field of parade
While Misplaced Rage
pages through abortions of blame
in the chemical caldron
where they ****, shower, and shave

...then towel-dry their babies

or not....

Where are the rapid-fire rats and bats
when we need 'em?

Semper Fi!

I'd recorded all
My old words, I left unsaid
On to something new