Somewhere deep in the skies of Montana
a lonely street corner flickers
casting coded light
upon the distant albino hillside

It was once a great lake
of snow and ice and melt and
unseen by life
It drained and died

and its beautiful lakebed sands
became the hillside
again

to tumble and fall
into valley and time
again

there we built an impermanent road
we pave and pave
maintain
with trucks and slabs of dirt and grain
roaming those Roman roads
again

Somewhere deep in that heartland
the strings that pumped the musculature
of a dying nation
slowly giving way to a violent attack
from within
oxidize and pool
into great tides
to one day see the coast

I am in California
but I see it clearly as a dream
where the great plains meet the mountain face
and the Cheyenne carved their heels into the dirt
for a bit
spirit
eroded into the winds

today the miners spit
at a coffee-town bar
into copper cans
licker than split
Owning the land that shakes
and shifts
redrawing god's lines
with a paper pad and a pen
for a bit

And the dresses the ladies wear shine
lacquered wood and the horses cry
and beside the interstate
the trucks steam and chuff
and their drivers gaze starry-eyed
onward, beyond into the night
beyond those flanking hillsides
to the flat ocean land sponged anew
that left the oil fields in Texas and the tar sands in
Athabasca
set ablaze in the fervor
of a death rattle
American heart
pumping to feed these hillsides
again

for tomorrow we begin.

With the reception I'm getting from you
I might as well be in Timbuktu
It's a growing feeling of deja vu

All my words you misconstrue
I tried to explain till in the face I'm peacock blue
One of these days your gonna get whats due

And life, on you is gonna chew
And spit you out like rancid stew
Then maybe you will feel bad for what you do

Treating me like a pair of old brown shoes
Walking on me until your through
An apology is overdue
Don't give me that look you know it's true

With you every thing is a hullabaloo
I think I'll find someone new
With them I'll move to Kalamazoo
There my life you can't askew

©Pauline Russell

I once met a man from Kalamazoo
Who bore on his arm an anchor tattoo
One day his lover
Ran off with his brother
Whatever was the poor man to do?

He sat down on a bus bound for Georgia
But somehow he wound up in Maine
And there he said "***** it."
He pretty well blew it
And got on a boat bound for Spain

When the captain was making his rounds
He saw the man grinding coffee grounds
And he saw the mans ink
And he stopped to think
"Is that man a part of the crew?"

That's when the captain's daughter came up
And asked the man if he could spare a cup
When the man met her eye
He nearly did die
For the beautiful woman he spied