Remembering My first taste of coffee--
just another commodity
standing outside Lowell Tech, a local factory,
a city corner in Haverhill snows— a worker's town
Passing out leaflets for a vapid Revolution
Another action/demonstration
to “Seize the Day!”
No computers; no social media
to fill the ranks of rallies at that time
So we froze our ***** off
trying to explain with sound bites, frosted breath
and fogs of rhetoric

A truth-- so tyranic, remote, arcane
too preposterous to even process
let alone explain

Standing there behind
its barbed wire reality
smoking from its stacks
the poisons of its process

Standing there
Stamping blood into my feet
Trying to convince my freezing self
my breaking heart
that all this truth?
was truly worth it!?
as I threw my education and my life away--
Trying to convince  

...that inside that building
IT-- was being made
****** and
that Agent of Death and Defoliation
of an orange persuasion
so our war could have its way
with rice paddies and jungles
and people of a browner, poorer smaller bent

While on the home-front
we filled the mill with unwilling bodies
that died somewhere else
off site...
“Outta sight”

...or maybe some years later
from toxins dumped in river
left to leach to cancers somewhere else
into the ground they sink
Through tentacled subsidiaries
restructured divestments
Legal dismissals
of responsibility
the players run like roaches
for the exits

One fast move after another
they dissolve disperse
morph into
renamed ****** entities
Clean up their storefronts
clean out our pockets
while “providing jobs”
“investing in community”
along the way
Putting on a Goodwill Tour
Then
taking it away

“What?  We never said....”

We'll take you down
leaving only the stench behind

Boxford (Trees)

Something wicked
Towering over
All that lives below,
All seems quiet
Until a storm initiates
Armageddon on the lives beneath.

Newburyport (Snowball Fight)

You ever hang out
With a dude you think
Is a complete dip-****
But then you realize,
After a wholesome
Snowball fight, that
He’s actually still *******
Terrible?

Salem (Fake Witches)

Demons are supposed
To be horrifying-
Morbid creatures
Who wish the destruction
Of all mortal begins.
So yes, I’d consider
You salem freaks
“witches.”

Haverhill (Badasses)

The towers here are
Reinforced with pure
Awesomeness-
If something was going
To fall, it would have
Done so already.

Dogtown (Real Witches)

The four mile hike
Was terrifying.
Each sound
Proliferating
In my mind
As we walked.
There were witches there alright,
And at anytime, they could extend
A cold hand and pull you into the night.

Plum Island (Heath)

Oh ******* ****,
My tank is low
Why did I drive
So far alone?
It’s cold and baren
Not a life form in sight,
I’m about to break down-

-And campout for the night.