America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to crown
with spacious lands
the ocean foam.
A grain of maize was your geography.
From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow tassels.

But, poet, let
history rest in its shroud;
praise with your lyre
the grain in its granaries:
sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.

First, a fine beard
fluttered in the field
above the tender teeth
of the young ear.
Then the husks parted
and fruitfulness burst its veils
of pale papyrus
that grains of laughter
might fall upon the earth.
To the stone,
in your journey,
you returned.
Not to the terrible stone,
the ******
triangle of Mexican death,
but to the grinding stone,
sacred
stone of your kitchens.
There, milk and matter,
strength-giving, nutritious
cornmeal pulp,
you were worked and patted
by the wondrous hands
of dark-skinned women.

Wherever you fall, maize,
whether into the
splendid *** of partridge, or among
country beans, you light up
the meal and lend it
your virginal flavor.

Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads through
blue sierras.

But is there
no end
to your treasure?

In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the empty
table of the miner.

Your light, your cornmeal, your hope
pervades America's solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are enemy legions.

Within your husks,
like gentle kernels,
our sober provincial
children's hearts were nurtured,
until life began
to shuck us from the ear.

Blue is not sure where to find the propeller.
The motor boat sent to scotch the shimmer. The waves
break inside a jar, and the little pieces are swept up by the wind and made into mist.

The Jar is shaken, the titanic sinks,
and the seagulls peck at our eyes.
Covered in barnacles, the new-found fish men
wander onto the sand and get coated,
as in cornmeal,
ready to fry.

Infatuated and floundering
they wander
to water again.
Drinking death hand over fist,
they ring themselves out with simply a twist.
The fish flap their fins so forcefully;
trying to
be flying to
a sea called the sky.

With a crumbled-ed crust they say, “motherboat or bust”,
but the navigation of aviation is a compilation of great frustration
for fishes whose function
is on boats, wrapped up
in those silly greatcoats.
Yet they made it, or so they claim, and with only one flounder or flunder who had made a blunder to blame.

If only old skipper had been a bit quicker, he wouldn't have had such a queer story to claim.

Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti comes along Peoria Street
     every morning at nine o'clock
With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes
     looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.
Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose
     husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through
     the negligence of a fellow-servant,
Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions
     for Jasper on the Bowmanville road.
She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning,
     Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does,
And gets back from Jasper's with cash for her day's
     work, between nine and ten o'clock at night.
Last week she got eight cents a box, Mrs. Pietro
     Giovannitti, picking onions for Jasper,
But this week Jasper dropped the pay to six cents a
     box because so many women and girls were answering
     the ads in the Daily News.
Jasper belongs to an Episcopal church in Ravenswood
     and on certain Sundays
He enjoys chanting the Nicene creed with his daughters
     on each side of him joining their voices with his.
If the preacher repeats old sermons of a Sunday, Jasper's
     mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he
     can make it produce more efficiently
And sometimes he speculates on whether he could word
     an ad in the Daily News so it would bring more
     women and girls out to his farm and reduce operating
     costs.
Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti is far from desperate about life;
     her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in
     three months.
And now while these are the pictures for today there are
     other pictures of the Giovannitti people I could give
     you for to-morrow,
And how some of them go to the county agent on winter
     mornings with their baskets for beans and cornmeal
     and molasses.
I listen to fellows saying here's good stuff for a novel or
     it might be worked up into a good play.
I say there's no dramatist living can put old Mrs.
     Gabrielle Giovannitti into a play with that kindling
     wood piled on top of her head coming along Peoria
     Street nine o'clock in the morning.

increasing the yield potential of a crop
has been the aim of Monsanto
with great efficiency
this company has hit on a jackpot
it holds a monopoly on agricultural products
yet Monsanto are selling
a very dodgy line of seeds
the cornmeal and wheat
has not a taste
which is truly sweet
people must become educated
in what they eat
the Monsanto Company
don't tell of adverse findings
about products that it vends
they bring many cancers
which affect men women and children
we all want a wholesome loaf of bread
one that hasn't had it wheat
genetically tampered with
we all deserve clean and unadulterated
food on our plates
to decrease those ever rising
cancer rates
Monsanto is a company
who cares little for our health
Monsanto is a company
who has only an interest
in making profits and wealth

As the blue moon climbs over the Potomac River,
I lay my tired body down next to the planted field.
Momma tells me that I’ll turn 13 tomorrow; my birthday wish….to be free
Like brail, the scars on my back speak to the humility in my life.
My dog Jip lays beside me and with a warm tongue conveys everything will be fine.

It’s the early fall here at Georgetown University
My name is Cornelius, Cornelius Hawkins and I write these words so you know my plight.
Here with me are my father, mother and 2 yr old sister.
We toil the field from dawn to dusk…the salt herring and cornmeal give us strength.
And my hands are forever clinging to this rosary and I pray God will hear my prayers.

I can’t begin to tell how afraid I am each and every day.
I try not to dwell on our strife and struggles, but day dream of downright happiness.
My family and our ancestors before us have been confined to slavery for 200 years.
Momma always says “There is no slavery, just ignorance”.
I hold her words near and dear to my heart and I never give up hope for a better life.

if i were to bread my tongue
with rocoto and cornmeal
and twist to reach the andean soil
my tastebuds long for so many nights
out of the year
olfaction and your left-sinus blockage
would stay cradled
in broken-baguette bread-crust baskets,
a trebuchet's missile,
naïve to the horn of the world,
and brittled to a carcinogenic crisp
caped in my earthenblood geysers
en el humo, en la tierra del fuego
in(fierno)

i recount by the tally marks of black felt
resorted to in the puddling of spilt tea,
(like broken china, you never missed
a beat to correct potential error

and my memory),
i count them to remember
the epiphanies standing over a red faucet
a gallon water jug, whistling snail-trickle,
wishing away the cracks in the grout
or the grout itself,
wishing away the cracks in the pottery
or porcelain facade of which
you're so fond and grace with singing cuticles

the fingers of a pianist
lacking the wherewithal
and solid brick gall
to answer the ivory's summons

i am not a piece of clay,
i respond poorly to your sculpture of my surface,
covered in oxides and baked in
hell's oven, your mountain fire
scathes me as it does cedar resin
and i am similarly embittered,
pooling sap & draining smoke
in the embers and dead charcoal
of your embrace

avant le corps, sans l'âme
sans le corps, avant l'âme

i was 15 when Kokopele knocked me up
and i was ripe, though unready --
every day i visited my spot
at first to relieve, but then to sate allure --
invisibly appeared,
mysterious pleasure day and night
throbbing at the thought
of that strange spot.
i clawed to sate in dream
what goddess women understand
in noontide reveries,
sultry swells of swoon
i don't know how my belly grew
was it at that drafty wall
or by the reeds..
there were several spots it seems.
i am ashamed
i was told to be ashamed
of this belly i love, and body
cravings carved into my soul,
covert sudden lusts
set in stone at 50,
children grown and making music of their own,
in tents along the streams'
comingled murmur moans,
he visits each in turns
to teach the spiral dance
and finish in the seeded womb.
flowers glow to settle racing heart with truth
infant recognition of an origin's choiceless birth
and now, i am in force --
become katcina cougar, proud Kokopelmana:
the role is taken by the horn --
eat my cornmeal cakes
with crooked somiviki smile while i make you mine
you can scatter but i will find you hiding
purring soft to catch you firm --
every boy and man will learn







.

At the ending of the world
there is a great unraveling
that celestial bow, wound into heartsong
and maestrate the caring music of things--
with these passions of the mind,
God seeking to unravel himself in the ever-fleeing
moment of philosophy, a Persephonic instance
in the archetype of love, psychotic and misnamed,
strait-jacketed in sin and given nothing but sweet
momentary decay

all the powerful souls connect sexually with the cosmos--
payed off, bastardized with a cigarette between their whispered lips
we hold no wealth but the ever-shifting dollar of life.

Fat Jack, fondly Catholic with angel smiles-- holds a rock of God in his hand, rocking softly
in god's busted gut-belly
spread like butter amongst the stars, asking all the same questions of Nirvana--
The last rumble of a skin-tight drumskin wrapped within a screaming symphonic twang of remnant souls--
Walking the notochord of corporeal form
the fantastic drone of rotorcraft, taunting the angelic lads and their brigadier God, singing psalms of limerence
Charlie Parker, musical sadness
Jack-man gladness
Don't forget them in the moment of monastic incantations

High-risen pyramidicals
Euclidian pitter-patter against the gusts and rains
in familiar, repetitive shapes the droplets of ichor
elucidate the frowns of downtown humanity
the locked door at the edge of the room, the air evacuated in fear,
seeking safety in the favorite belfry of an ancient wailing abbey
the dusty oil-towns of century ago
Imbibes the modern-day Maricopa plain
folk digging for dino-rock and black gold, selling dreams to downtrodden lost boys
the mistakes of RV park families

Farmland road
in Louisiana brew
the atmosphere, keeping personal thoughts trapped
a high-pressure zone
the ever-wandering
churning winds of eventual hurricane
the sequence that tickles Fibonacci's fancies and
calls us to dream--
a great Babel of God's consistent scattering heart.

in this great combustible chamber, loud obnoxious gaseous veils
in a low sigh our precipitate souls
smog on the failed shackles of stale blood
dripping this oil on the lips
holding friendly smiles
hiding sickening grins
callous, angry, the honey-chalice sought be not by man or God
alike;

Charlie Parker, playing the world's instrumentation
a track to follow
faded as the ancient road roaming
Rome's wet snail trail
blinking and shimmering into existence
a dewlit morning
the conglomerate rock is a cradle for human discomfort
admitted and hidden
to be a better hold than the hands of the earth
in these cornmeal roads,
digging out sugars from her *****
and sipping on the liquor of life in classic fermentation

to hold the road in your hands, the world on your lips
to tell the catacombs of love you would be her hostess,
seeking answers in the bones of ancient souls and refining
in deep sighs,
loving the things we cannot be.

This translation machine is broken-
trying to say love and it says hate
put in a phrase of friendship tokens
and it levels one at hell's gate

"New-Speak" and Homeland insecurities
una máquina rota, spells of discontent
What breaks borders other language;
Is it bred of complacent, lazy lengua ?

Languishing in privileged syllables
boiling over rice stew vocabularies
slamming with a hip-go spiritual
trying to make sadza in this crucible

This hairpin empire vomits convolutions
history, her-story, suffer culture's debt
education's deficit mouths a babble revolution
while a classicist argument tattles future threats

Talk a tale of totem's gift in parable or song
spill some beans and climb a stalk up a golden path
Give tongue your peace with liberal speech along
while some may grunt we sing a verdant poem

-cec



sadza - in Shona, Ugali in East Africa, is a cooked cornmeal that is the staple food in Zimbabwe and other parts of southern and eastern Africa. This food is cooked widely in other countries of the region. Sadza in appearance is a thickened porridge.

I have come to conclusion
over sunpierced crust
brittle as tobacco leaf
astride mottled nag
scraggling on loose gravel
sandsoaked
saltsteeped
leadheavy in lid
past dactyled tracks
parallel cobbled macadam
wavering shale
lockjawed lava rock
fractured cobalt
lone juniper
forgotten scrub
open boil of tar and pitch
halfburied bones of leviathan
still shifting in the clouded boom
of stone
through grapeshot hail
adobed pueblos
thatchskinned women
and straw men
all witches
flaying the gila
pestling scale with cornmeal
and fermented mescal
desert sangria
hallucinating sideways in the murk
where coyotes yip
and each star a conflagration
mirrored in the captive eyes
of floundered meteorites
at the terminus
where sun and moon merge
I know the question
and response
from where do you come
to where do you go

interfere journey body sweaty mastermind dust
dummy\
inhale shale bond reason oxidize crummy
read write swell\
ready curve encrypt slime minus shell heady set
flow sacrifice\
believe alter oceanic shelf killing part of Hell split Earth lent
mayhem vent\
outspent wipe well being clean provoke Cain uphold Able
mean mug\
dump cornmeal unicorn convulsing mend restitution advertently
spiel indent\
hand over to pilot retribution intend empty zeal rummage
destitution\
Hasidic inside the writ spirit fly guide escape unravel ways of
savage\
lives out the side Pegasus soar glide abide Nein but fine rhyme
hymns\

Interfere journey Interference body Sweaty Write Mud
mind Breath getty Read Reference speed Preference encryp
To Two Time Self ready flow sacrifice beliefs feeling elf pelt
killing part of myself scuffing dreams bare in the air unfair  
outspent **** wiped well being clean provoked hell feeding on mean cornmeal convulsing restitution fed invertly beans bent
soul over to pilot retribution empty zeal stomach destitution
inside the pit spirit fly guide escape veal travel ways of savage meal
out the side five wing soar glide abide Nein but fine wine being shine

The workman told you to bury a curled dark lock

Of your dead baby’s hair in the earth,

A quiet offering to a quieter god

You spent several months weeping to the sky

Your small hands curled into your white frock



Work was left unattended in your colorful house

No food on the stove,

No boiling salt fish, or softened dumplings in murky white water

The pungent smell of cured fish filling the quieter home

The home, austere and shrinking into the long street

Your helper comes to do all this

Your children understand in their small ways



You covered the lock of dark hair with fresh dark soil

Palm fronds wave in the wind

Salty sea air kisses your wet skin

Tears make tracks on your cheeks like a map pointing to

Nothingness, like a page of a book with words of moroseness



Once you had my mother, birthed her into a world of noise

The sure and strong hands of the matriarchal mother,

Your mother, who’d delivered more babies than she’d had her numerous children

Then you cooked, you toiled, swept the veranda with your broom

Left the buried lock of hair in the locked cabinet of your mind



Now, when I make the saltfish, I do it with stilted preparation

My hands form lumpy misshapen cornmeal dumplings

I fry the little ***** of dough for too long, they come out dry

I pop one into my mouth and chew

There, the fragrant smell of your perfume,

Sweet lull of your voice, your birdlike hands.

We walked the beaches holding hands,
Our naked feet massaged upon its
Grainy, cornmeal, golden sand
And water blue as Texas Bonnets.

The sun was gently overcast,
Its golden light dispelled by haze.
And though it's beauty would not last,
Our hearts were with its fleeting rays.

I dared to touch you, eye to eye,
And in your bright gray Iris found
That same dispelled and gentle sky
Forever to my spirit bound.

Our footsteps furrowed in the sea,
As if the ocean bid them come
And dance its waters rhythmically.
They stayed, instead, like raisined plums.

And while we walked in harmony
We sang a hymn to God, our King,
Encouraged by the endless sea
And love so vast, untamed, to sing.

The ocean seemed to sing along
And underscored our three-four time
With lapping like a metronome—
The trio trippingly sublime.

Our anthem, carried on the breeze,
Sauntered through your curly hair.
A lonesome trembling dread then seized
Your forehead—cute while whipping there.

At last, as though a common day,
The sun went down, gave way to moon.
Our song grew still. A silent lay
Voiced then our love. But that was June.

If love's first minute after Noon
Is night, our walking, singing songs
Should have made us fear, since soon
The love we shared would all be wrong.

But true minds married will confess
That Love's no fool of Times. So, Sweet,
Our love continues to regress
While holding hands with wrinkled feet.

I like to believe
that nobody understands me
and I'm one of a kind
lost to obscurity
but hinting of mysterious
significance

And I feel sorry for
my uncle's three-legged dog
and the malignancy
of fear in rural America
and the failed successes
of the Bolsheviks

I wonder about the air
in Saõ Paolo in January
and the muskuloskelatal
infirmities that creep in
and make the aged
into churlish curmudgeons

There is no way I could
hunt truffles or find a fresh
Morel in the woods when
I didn't even realize until
my grandmother died that
we own a creek

Uttering vespers in moonlight
yields some sanguine lucidity
like contemplating the nuanced
differences between polenta
and cornmeal mush

It's like I'll never write a poem
in time or finish a marathon
or kiss a stranger deeply
through the crisp ventillation
of nevermore.

We might daydream the bombastic
colors of Cezanne but all
we'll ever be is some nondescript
platinum ischemic flash,
a slimy buffet consisting in
all-is-lost

An apocryphal journey
to the center of the city
faces our insubordination to plastic
with the harshness of a dictionary
in the face of the illiterate

But in the end, apoplectically
forgotten, I come to the
unintelligent conclusion,
mathematically speaking,
that there is nothing singular

nor more available
than the finite banality
of my empty, insufficiently
obscurantist words which
flow and choke and all can know
and see clearly through

though I insist that none
of this pretence is born
of any maleveloence, and I chide
"How very meta of me indeed"

to have thought of another witty
and most cleverest retort
the day after the insult
was first delivered

But I used my last gift card
to purchase this still life
to pierce the hollow
cerulean satisfaction
otherwise known as tears

Barring diastolic ******
I'll stick around to see
how this all turns out
and hope that one day I can stop
being so completely understood

And then I can hide in the lonely
and find refuge in the cave
as a single meaningless scrawl
buried in the last pages
at the end of the world.

Here's what I'll collect of us:
1. Your hand holding my nine year old one,
2. small and uncertain
3. small and growing
4. You waking up before the rest of the world
5. The sound of you raking fallen brittle palm fronds and leaves
6. Feeding the dogs
7. Turning the cornmeal for them in the massive ***
8. Your rare smiles
9. The smell of Old Spice
10. Filling the shopping cart with whatever I wanted
11. My too-tiny hands clasping about the cart and pushing it along with you
12. Us scouring the aisles for Eggo's waffles and my favorite brand of banana chips
13. My nine year old self sitting on your lap while you dozed off
14. Our conversations about politics and the current state of the world
15. Our long conversations
16. Our long conversations about your youth
17. Me hearing your story about how you cared for yourself from 15 years old for the 105th time
18. Me never getting tired of hearing about that story
19. Your rare smiles reaching your eyes
20. The softness of your hair as I stroke your head now
21. Sitting by your bedside and being comforted by your soft breath as you sleep
22. Sitting by your bedside remembering my childhood with you
23. The long summers in your house with grandma and my cousin
24. The long summers in your house on the island
25. The long summers back home--back in your home country
26. Your hand holding my nine year old one,
27. small and uncertain
28. small and growing
29. You waking up before the rest of the world
30. You going to sleep after everyone else
31. Your hand holding mine.
32.   Your breath.
33.   The softness and steadiness of your breath.

my thoughts
bread you daily
as if you were breast of chicken
and I were battered cornmeal.

March and April are the time
when crappie bite and winds chime
Cedar Creek, Prince's dock
it's the spot do not mock

Years of trees submerged there
fishing rods used by the pair
minnow on one jig on the other
catching crappie is never a bother

Medium shiner and red and chartreuse skirt
cast em out wait for the ****
cold Coors lite in the fridge
if not biting here, let’s try Caney bridge

Or maybe a dock across the way
down on the dam at the end of the day
but usually the dock will do just fine
under lights at dark or in  sunshine

Fill the basket with white and black
watch the cork, reel the slack
when it bobs, set the hook
paperlip slab, fillet and cook

Electric knife and old butcher block
cleaning fish around the clock
cornmeal, seasoning and fillets
a great dinner at the end of the day

Shake in a sack and toss in hot oil
toss in some hushpuppies' watch it roil.
eating on the deck with family and friends
our bellies full, the day ends

Cornrows forge a rhythm to the sun
and self love feels like a line dance.
A shake of tassels and silks that
unfurl in the nick of time.

Love flowers on a stalk, above, below.
The wind sweeps in an airy betrothal,
a surge and then a sway, sashay,
a whirl in the nick of time.

Pollen, sparkles, pixel burst.
How do the ears of corn know,
to listen to the wind holler,
to twirl in the nick of time.

In a Caryopsis, a synopsis
of self seducing passions,
crushed to cornmeal. Floury
swirl in the nick of time.

As plaintive tones from a distant flute
     drifted across the mesa valley    
the sun over Spruce Tree House
     began its descent toward dusk.

Above the courtyard, Anasazi masons
     plaster-sealed the final stones
on the great cylindrical tower.
     Collisions of mano and metate
echoed across the canyon as women
     crushed dried kernals into cornmeal.
Others hummed as their skilled hands
     brushed thin black patterns onto
scores of newly crafted bowls and jars.

A young girl rushed up a ladder
     to announce her brothers' return
from ripe mesa top fields,
     carrying baskets of fresh cut
corn, squash and beans on their backs.

A summer of nourishing rain
     promised that storage cists
would be stocked well with food for
     the arduous winter ahead
and seed for the vernal plantings.

Dusk fell on Spruce Tree plaza
     as rich aromas of venison
and fresh baked flatbread
     suffused the crisp October air.

I'm a dulled edge,
getting dressed, put on your shoes
and sit on the couch, waiting
for the love of your life to come
walking in through the door, singing.
but she doesnt come,
fate stood you up.
no smiling face to greet you,
no reason to get up, to bathe,
to leave the house,  to cook,
to get angry, to feel anything.
the nights are long and full
of drinking with whoever can pass a
bottle. beer. wine. pouring *****
in the wine. blowing half your check
at the bar one night,  and the
other half the next.
and I keep thinking 'where's she at?'
today I woke up early,
took out the trash,  smoked a cigarette
watched the sun rise for a while,
turned on the radio, they were
playing Rachmaninoff, turned the
radio back off.
let the cat chew on my beard for
a while.
I've done just about everything,
what else is there?
so I drive to the store. grabbed
a little basket and put in
soap, two apples, an onion,
buy the wrong kind of cornmeal.
some kale and mushrooms.
instinctively buy some things the
last one liked (I'm terrified I'll never
be able to break that habit).
drive home put down the bags.
start taking out the contents and
looking at them,
placing them methodically on the
table crowded with paper and
***** dishes and crumpled
beer cans
and I stare at the sink
full of the same
and then I look at the
floor covered in garbage
and finally to the kale in
my hand.
"my god," I said to the kale "this
is how suicides happen."
I put it down, smoke
another cigarette and watch
the tree growing in the
courtyard. it'll be here after I'm
dead, one of the ugly stains
left in my wake.

☆
against the ugly light of a brand new
day. we
take comfort in the bruises on our
future bellies
.
my youthquake comes to a theater near
you  
in whitebreakers of overeducated hooves blustering forward without pleasure

and.in recycled boyhoods bandaged together in
peanutbutterhaste

i can_


.
advocate for me on your sly plunge into
Helios
swanlike and stumbling.

solution is
calling


i am unmaker of your radiotheist fire.


wrapt  up in your eternal parka like fishing net for rare creatures.blushing


it brings peace as i eradicate all sense of fashion.pulling on the uneven strings of the hood like a
God
for better people (than you)

i discount you in this poem and amid other things where
1 1 7 55 47 40 30 10
.


i crack open the cocoons you retreat
to
for
respite
like a
pre-dinner platter.washing my hands
in the crumbs
of your
falling cornmeal
bones.

(as)you
get caught
in the depression left  in my wallet when i
get up

to walk away

trembling-
fabulous as
bowie
's
ghost


doing you the most glorious harm.

i am hauling the ruins of war
the haggard ones passing by
fat wrinkles under the chin
they never were, but will be

the haggard ones will be
without having existed, on paper
leaden faces shining silverly
they don't know about existence

from the bazaars of being, they
steal the fruit of red dreams
sometimes they come to us,
walking around in cities, strayed

multiple faces, unrecognizable
a teint, hidden under cornmeal
they are hauling the ruins of war
heads hanging down to the ground

A slash of a smile, kimono stripped shoulders
Koi scale tattoos, Okinawa rainy day blues
Drown yourself in *****, fight 'till you lose
Pale skinned pathological lover
Soulstone hustler, rustler & bustler
Revolving revolvers under samurai dusters
Wild west Tokyo rose blessed
Handwritten love letters on a desk, kiss sealed
A bowl of cornmeal, these things we steal
A lovelock of hearthsouls, sous chef gazpacho
Tasty cannibal nachos, eating hearts in a palm grove
Children gathered round a stone
The feeling of truly being alone
Making tools from your enemies bones
More brutal than any historical score
We sleep, we snore, 2+2=4, once, no more
Coconuts falling on the shore for eternity
Every blade of grass is holy to me
It's the bullet we see that gets us
We can all love each other is we let us
Balloon powered spaceships, liftoff
Raise your sails on the submarine
Big, square, wheels on your SUV
Life is like a tree, just growing
Forget all your worries, let's just get going

As Lenny Bruce had said of Dobermans: "You feed them, you raise them, and in 10 years they **** you." Our borders remain set, our resolve solid, our moles malignant. Mexicans with power need not be feared as they'll drive the price of taco fixings down. Into basements and foundations go our beans & cornmeal; our singles and their faithlessness; our tramps, transients and hobos. [Hunger will stalk you. You must consume the fat-stores. You must eat BELOW your means.]

My papers are such a mess
Finding rulers in my chest
The putrid animosity, the Gorsuch of my truth, what is forgiven
Is pastly driven
What is unwritten
Is girly rhythm

The pain of a winter pole
Spending dollars at home
Telling whiskey that she is a lonesome
A gift is a friend for a child
Telling you what you like
All my statements are subject to new drafts
A cornmeal, a *******, a snake

The Badlands have
lost their battery charge.
There, I realized it's easier
to say "It is what it is"~
harder to do.

The Permian desert doesn't
care for sentimentality,
shriveling drivel in an oily
heatwave mustard gas mirage.

Thirst, cornmeal pancakes
and a left-handed horse to
get us out of an uninviting
cactus conflagration.
Not allot to say about this place.

Sara Fielder © May 2018