We've outdone Father Abraham
In sacrificing girls and boys;
Along the border, in the wars
That serve no cause but oligarchs,
Who reassign the deity,
Call Moloch to America,
With powder, pills and poverty,
While celebrating liberty.

Don't fault the peasants, red or blue,
Whose votes have been corrected by
The players in the party rooms.
The unwashed--unbrushed teeth on edge-
Come out of hell for processing,
Discover yet another ring.

A pack of earnest individuals
Turned up at Tom's apartment for the wake;
Concupiscent philosophers intent
On explicating Wittgenstein and Kant,
And English post docs stuck somewhere in Joyce--
The river running through the lion's mouth--
A few of us on LSD, and Ron,
Blonde hair and chiseled, wistful midwest face,
Old granite in his rusted pickup bed,
Palimpsest still just traceable as Hall,
With d. and 18 something underneath,
Processing uphill in the cold dark night
To footsteps of the Hall of Languages,
Long climb of concrete steps, and parked his truck.
We clambered over sides and carried
That rock a little more than halfway up
Those daunting stairs that Delmore climbed in angst,
And Carver, breathing hard, in mourning for
America, romantic Reagan just
Elected president and my black dog,
As snow began to fall, just settling in.

Pompeo says just relocate,
Don't fret about the climate change,
The ice and fires that rearrange--
At any rate it's much too late.

Pompeii saw fire come raining down,
The melted earth run through the streets.
But we have new technologies--
They've parked the rockets outside town.

The darkness in a country spreads,
Collects more space and settles in,
Asphyxiating kith and kin--
Kids slogging through the latest meds.

We deserve some affirmation,
Brighter rhythms, smiling faces,
Love & peace among all races--
Make again a grateful nation.

I've been through Webster's book and none of this
Is good enough to understand your love,
Which held me close against the wide abyss--
Not cast below or rising up above,
Mortality the cost of tasting bliss,
Eternal mourning of a peace-blue dove.
Your touch is more than I and I deserve;
Your soul is where the goddess finds her nerve.

She's got a new coat, rabbit fur,
She found marked down in mid July
In a strip mall consignment store.
She's wearing it at work tonight.
A new layer, first to come off
As she dances in bright, hot lights.
Washingtons, Lincolns and Jackson
Collect on a string drunks tug on.

At home she's got a girl and boy,
Who wait with grandma while she works,
Expecting she'll arrive with toys,
And bar food served with plastic forks.
It's Friday night, no school tomorrow.
She packs them in and starts the car.

The world's abandoned us and left
Us reeling from its own devices,
Separating smaller slices,
Cold servers calculating theft,
Corrupting every sacred craft.
Women punished for their choices.
Hungry children got no voices.
Let's have a war, without the draft.
What worth in words the poet wrote,
Old gods could show us how to live?
Bad questions linger, bodies float.
Who knew the earth could cease to give?
I leave this ragged, tortured note.
And from this pen, I'll forge a shiv.