Someone asked what America means to me.
Well, it's more than the land of the free and the home of the brave.
It's more than a place of opportunity
Or roads paved in gold.
It's pride.
America is its people, who come from all walks of life.
It's history.
It's the future.
It's humanity.
It's tragedy and cruelty.
So what does America mean to me?
America is everything.

Millions will panic and they won't know what to do.
America is about to experience a Great Depression II.
I just learned that tomorrow the Stock Market will crash.
I'll be broke and I'll lose my house, my car and all of my cash.
My wife said she and our children will leave if I end up broke.
When I say that certain people will commit suicide, it's no joke.
I'm going to **** myself because I will lose everything I have to live for.
The economy will go to Hell in a hand basket and people will be dirt poor.
This Great Depression will make the first one look like a Sunday School picnic.
Millions will struggle to make ends meet, they will have good reason to panic.
Hard times are coming for every American and people better be prepared.
When the Stock Market crashes, people will have good reason to be scared.
If you're religious, now would be a good time to pray.
America is about to go through Hell, we've seen better days.

FOR...







US ARMY

I dreamt I was walking across the high plains,
through the husk of a small American town.

The air was hazy
with distant smoke. The sun was high in a

muted, cloudless sky. The heat radiated
through my temples. I was parched, older, leathery, searching.

I came upon
a rusted-out school bus on the side of a dirt road

I walked in. The seats had been removed
from the bus. Along the left side lay

a long row of bedridden, elderly adults, comatose and naked,
each one receiving the slow drip of a tincture into the mouth:

clear nectar oozing from a carnivorous plant
hanging from the bus’s ceiling.

There were small children, also naked,
standing there in the bus. Their eyes

were covered with dark patches. As I turned
to leave, walking back down toward the road,

one of the children tugged on my leg. I turned
to address the child, our faces now nearly meeting,

and I saw that her eyes were not covered,
but removed. Two spindly black voids hung there

instead. “It's okay,” the child said to me.
“You don't need to be afraid.”

*      *      *

I continued down the road, the air
murky, salty, boiling, deadly.

A neon billboard with an American flag waving
shone off in the distance.

behind it loomed a giant radio tower,
hard at work transmitting,

but I knew that its broadcasts
were never meant for me to begin with.

Black stone juts out over greying ice,
A mass of alpine greenery,
Half bare, half masked in white;
The motion of a turner painting,
Colours cast through Lowry's eyes.

Camouflaged upon a riverside
With no sign of Lutheran ambition,
As faith faltered, medieval to Christ,
A small church modestly mirages,
Casting simplicity into Nordic pride.

The excitement of the northern lights
Over the precipice of these continents,
American and Eurasian plates collide.
The Langjökull Glacier screams
Witnessing its own untimely demise.

The remoteness captured in the landscape
Starkly contrasts to us who bear witness to it
And in the mirroring of the landscape
A lonely civil dwelling knows nothing
Of war between nature and humankind.

OrIginally published JANUARY 2017 -
The Leader
February 2020 - He Marches On.

Hoofbeats from a strange land,
As cascading Thunder roared,
upon the horse of prosperity,
     he rode purposely,

Many embraced him as disciples,
  Others laughed and jeered,
     A fool has come today,
   But his garments are fine,

Not a son of god nor prophet,
  But rain in a drought,
    For the thirsty,
Who had tasted sand,

  A destroyer for others,
ancient dams would fall,
Thunder, blessings, cursing’s,
For The Leader had come,


  A Time of fear for her,
  A Time of hope for him,
They danced in bitterness,
Why this volatile disunion,

The Leader on his day,
Shouted visions for disciples,
unbelievers swam in confusion,
Many cried and screamed,
              Alas,

James Kirk-Wiggins (c) 2017

The farmhand burns the leaves, though the bodies of slaves
Lie at heaven’s impasse in the trees of dying looks, barring them
From peaceful death, the sad emulsified perch of love and heat,
Hung at noon like John Brown untended, bearded of sticky summer,
Heavy-headed swinging noon and the smell of honeysuckle blood,
Fetid day like the coming dirt of graves, the clinging air of disease,
Snake-winding down from the trees with no pleasure of the bitten apple.

let's make a deal:
and return him

I find myself floundering and drowning
In a country not made for me
I find myself clinging to fantasies
Where I **** over the very systems
That have binded me from birth
Until I remember
I was never meant to flourish
In a society created and maintained by
Them
And that they would and will
Never
Allow me to prosper as they all have