I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living-with lies-on the tombs of liars.
  
Aliar looks 'em in the eye
And lies to a woman,
Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.
And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.
  
  A liar lies to nations.
  A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
  A laugh in his neck,
  A lie in his mouth.
And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
  He is straight as a dog's hind leg.
  He is straight as a corkscrew.
He is white as a black cat's foot at midnight.
  
The tongue of a man is tied on this,
On the liar who lies to nations,
The liar who lies to the people.
The tongue of a man is tied on this
And ends: To hell with 'em all.
  To hell with 'em all.
  
It's a song hard as a riveter's hammer,
  Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
  Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
Twisted as a shell-shock idiot's gibber.
  
The liars met where the doors were locked.
They said to each other: Now for war.
The liars fixed it and told 'em: Go.
  
Across their tables they fixed it up,
Behind their doors away from the mob.
And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.
The guns blew seven million off the map,
The guns sent seven million west.
Seven million shoving up the daisies.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
  The liars who lie to nations.
  
  And now
  Out of the butcher's job
  And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
  Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let's go back where we were.
    Let us run the world again, us, us.
  
Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we'll cash in again.
  
So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
  Let the strong men be ready.
  Let the strong men watch.
  Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
  Let the liars get their finish,
  The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
  To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again.
  
So I hear The People tell each other:
  Look at to-day and to-morrow.
  Fix this clock that nicks off millions
  When The Liars say it's time.
  Take things in your own hands.
    To hell with 'em all,
  The liars who lie to nations,
  The liars who lie to The People.

Tonight the earth blows a riveter of wind between my ears,
From cheek to cheek the cold has stolen ice sculptures from tears,
I'm wondering what mighty god could save us from the glory years,
Saddened by the reflection at the end of those days in the mirrors.

A baseline that you feel in your chest,
Humming thick in your ears,
And your mouth,
You just want to live in their blur of impactful words,
That you don’t understand,
Because it’s just a baseline to you,
But have you ever felt so proud of someone?
That what they’re saying, or what they’re playing or who they’re being,
Becomes the only thing that’s keeping off the rain,
And you can see every tooth in the room,
Every heart that becomes unbroken and
        every heart that breaks,
Well it’s a shooting star,
Baby it’s gold dust,
Because his gaze is tattooed on your body,
Under your sweater,
Under your skirt,
Yours is a crime scene littered with his fingerprints,
But you’re no ****** victim,
Jackie,
       Jane,
             Joan,
Wife,
     Mother,
             Daughter,
Survivor,
          Protector,
                     Warrior,
Woman,
Know when it’s dark,
And subtle shadows are all that remains of your bodies,
Finding all the bones in your shoulder,
The piano strings that move your fingers,
And each indentation of your spine,
Is a bible,
But God won’t give him strength,
It’s your skeleton that is fortitude,
You’re the dragon protecting the castle,
You’re Rosie the Riveter,
You can hold up the world with perfectly manicured hands,
You will listen,
And you will care,
Let him breathe in the fractions of your soul that you exhale,
That way,
Every standing ovation and
     every wound that heals,
Is saturated with the influence of you,
Though you don’t understand,
That baseline you can feel in your chest,
It is your to be proud of too.

Man, these opinions be really ******* up my mental.

They don't stop me from making money just stop me from standing tall.
They shouldn't matter and for years I've let them roll off my shoulders.

But as a human being, hearing the same thing only makes me colder.
I don't care what they say, but to my dismay, it's everything you deem unfit.

The tiger stripes on my belly, the extra softness of my thighs.
Things that I viewed as simple characteristics but yet these are unflattering in your eyes.

The bulge of my stomach, the layer of graspable skin on my side
Those are all things that I've let slip from my mind
They don't stop me from soaring higher, achieving goals, or even improving my skill set.

But your gaze is like daggers and your words like bullets
It causes these now undesirable features to fester my soul
If I dare fix them they have to gain your approval.

And for those who still think that words don't matter, step off of your pedestal and let me serve you a reality platter.

If the vast majority declares it outdated you drop it.
If the vast majority says it's trendy you adopt it. And while it may seem easy to ignore the hype, it takes an extremely mentally strong individual to say **** it and goodbye.

We would all like to believe that we're our own person.
But when there is a flaw that is repeatedly critiqued, we lose sight of who we are and that's the number one lesson.

I want to lose two pairs of black glasses and my shoes
I want to tell the delivery boy that I don’t care how much change I get back
I want to ice the back deck and wet the chairs
I want to break a futon; feel taco-like
I want to paint my body, my friends body
I want to construct a bed in the laundry room with silk sheets
I want to neglect the shower for three days
I want to climb a roof and get lost in a corn maze
I want to leave my personal belongings in a plastic bag
I want to walk alone two miles to get a hot dog and meet a ***

we want to step in leaking toilet water
we want to play hide and seek in a dark house, discover an attic
we want to drink veggie burgers and wash them down with milk
we want to find a hat for a pickle and for one day wear only vests
we want to tailgate for napolean dynamite
we want to stay up late sitting on the flip side of windowsills
we want to spill everything and learn how to jump cars

they want to save taco bells hot sauce in paper bags
they want to build a fort with a closet door and some hooks
they want to dance all night, create a star shape with their legs
they want to “whod I come with? Ladies…!” just like rosie the riveter
they want to walk around telling the trees to be quiet
they want to move a couch to the from lawn and reside

*-MJS

I see you,
Uh-huh, I see you,
I see right through you,
I see you.

I see your desperation,
Your attempts to keep me wanting,
You,
Everything about you,
I see you.

I see you turning older, on the outside,
More mature, like a sophisticated riveter,
But you’re still a talentless shrew,
Daddy’s little princess,
Without the ability to drive forward,
I see you.

I see you for what you are,
I see you for what you always have been,
Always will be,
Always fail to be,
I see you.

I see you rubbing my face in dirt,
I see you trying so hard to be mean,
Independent,
Free of me,
I see you.

I see that all of that would be okay,
If I didn’t see how you still care,
I see that you still care,
I see you.

I see that if your attempts to move on,
were to help yourself,
Not to hurt me,
That’d be fine,
But I see through you,
I see you.

I see that you are better off,
I see that I’m well on my way,
I see that if you had any courage at all,
You’d stop pretending that we both,
Don’t see,
How much we miss our little era,
Even though we put on this digital show,
Of being fine,
I see this facade we both play.

I see you,
Seeing me see you,
And seeing how phony we are,
Pretending to see nothing,
I see you.

Nothing but a hopeless
Romantic
Riveter of dreams and of schemes
Music-loving
Constantly-acting
Matter-of-facting
Unlikely
Poet.

Laying in bed with feet
I can smell from the other end of me,
with a poster of Malcolm X
and one of Rosie the Riveter.
A suitcase full of lights,
a wooden violin case,
a pull up bar,
a briefcase full of comic books,
and my bag.
Barely room for me.
No internet tonight.
Bad television.
A cardboard box
missing a panel, that reads,
"size matters!".
Tired. Alone.
Packed up all my books.

Moving into half of a home;
no toilet, no kitchen sink,
fridge is broken, paint missing,
smells weird, windows are *****,
everything is smaller and we
have too much ****,
so far all we have is electricity and
light.

Three hampers full of clothes,
two amplifiers, 5 guitars,
2 keyboards, a television,
a dresser, and a night stand.
Also a bed.
Whats left to go.
Me.

Cigarette smoke fills the rooms,
but it isn't mine obviously.
Still fills my lungs.
Fills my soul.
Commercial voices
fill the rooms.
Lust for sleep.
I wanna wake up somewhere
more comfortable than here.
Every insect in this room owns it
as much as I do now.
Nowhere to run.

I'm on a ship and I'm scared,
I'm not panicking, but
I'm scared of drowning.
Sinking has ceased to
stir my fears, because
the reality of drowning
has been realized.
Nothing can be fixed anymore,
least of all by me.
Cracks in the hull.
No iceberg,
just pressure.
I'm the type to choke in puddles,
so I'd say I'm handling well.

Hallways full of trash.
No furniture here… just **** on the floors.
I was concerned that I wouldn't
have my **** together when this happened
and it appears to be the exact opposite.
It's a darker comedy, that's for **** sure.
I'd sell everything if someone would
just ******* buy it, and if you feel that
then hold a lighter to the sky
for me tonight while
I'm still here.

They sometimes call me the gray girl.

For most, it's the dye I  pollute my ***** dish water hair with but
for few, it's the cold ice water that's replaced the liquid pumping through me.

Sometimes I wear men's golf sweaters in the summer.

The droplets that slide down my back remind me
that even abominable snowmen melt and while
it's mostly sweat, it's partially my inner workings thawing becoming nothing but a pool beneath my wiggling toes.

Deep puddles, never-ending trenches to trudge through,
Shallow puddles, the same ones I used to play in when I was a kid. Splashing and leaping until my lower limbs stay covered in rain water mud and my bangs smell like the outside air.
I didn't seem to melt as easily then.

They sometimes call me the girl frozen in time

Maybe for the '96 edition baseball keds I wear in the fall, mimicking the past, keeping it's stillness locked away in a time capsule along with the same ice princess costume I wore three Halloweens in a row.

Or maybe for the worn out flannel from Pools that always seems to be the first thing I throw on my shivering body when old man winter blows his first frosty kiss
always finding it's way to my cheek.

They sometimes call me rosie

Not the riveter, but always for the hue of reddish pink that accents my nose when spring showers and April flowers grace my passageways and fill my visuals.

It's more than the allergens, it's the intoxication of new life with fresh beginnings that make everything seem smoother than the honey tea dripping down the corner of my mouth.

They sometimes call me all of these things, but I've always been known as the season of dwindle.

Wanting a wall to keep them out
With a bad tan and duck lip pout

America's greatest skin stain
causing Lady Liberty's chafe pain
even she runs from the guy
with a fake wig and long tie
Grabbing mother nature by the crotch
and deporting father time back to a watch
standing there, with a sinister smile
proud of his naive guile
fascinated by walls
like a teenage girl, and malls
"Make America Great Again"
For the white man
steal and deport
ICE for the minorities support
and paper towels as his ball
because his hands are really small

Wanting a wall to keep them out
With a bad tan and duck lip pout

Kissing Manifest Destiny in the lips
and grabbing "Rosie the Riveter" by the hips
Stealing Mona Lisa's smile
And inviting Pocahontas to the aisle
with Monica and Hillary in the oval office
and Medusa as his goddess
Enjoying his White house fling
While working on his golf swing
TV host a great leader?
Just a silver spoon feeder
what did Melania see in him?
a billion dollar synonym?
Vile pig in wolf's clothing
Enjoying the boasting
Of being a wordsmith
like a grim reaper with a broken scythe

Wanting a wall to keep them out
with a bad tan and duck lip pout

Wanting to date his daughter
unable to get to an island with big water
racist with every type of fear
truly hate his ugly sneer
no more animals in the zoos
but i guess its all just fake news
only fake when they cover him
then he tweets it to the brim
of the walls he wants to build
that's the only time when hes skilled
using his power to oppress
when will we get out of this mess
with ignorant and violent supporters
KKK and the patrol at the borders
making me want to *****
when he shoots across TV screens
like a comet.

But he wants a wall to keep them out
with a bad tan and duck lip pout

Ready for any feminist feat
In her ****-tube and starry skirt,
Wonder-Woman looks petite
(though probably ought to don a shirt)
In, fact we’d better make her black
Before her foes, unhinged, attack . . .

Go-go boots show off her legs
Muscled for emancipation;
And for bearing wonder-eggs
Through empowered ovulation.
Binary gender’s warrior queen
Bursts forth upon our sexist scene,

And bristling with the strength of ten
Of her not-so wondrous sisters,
She centers red-starred crown, and then
She’s off to fight the truth’s resisters:
Rosie the Riveter’s better half—
An old-school feminist sacred calf.