i

It isn’t that we weren’t in love. It’s just the violins were out of tune. One time a teacher told me laboratories can make the color blue. Meanwhile the job of God got lost to automation. Meanwhile fresh water is distilled into vodka for novelty shot glasses. Meanwhile the economy turned muggy mosquito hot and wilts with the lilies. Meanwhile all the kids fall in love!

 

ii

I called my sister and told her I met somebody. My sister and I, we shared a childhood with Lincoln Logs and farmer grandpas. We both had dreams. She found hers in a preacher’s hand. My dreams are gum-stuck in the woods, in the woods forty years from now, in the woods and the holy land. The holy land in tomorrow’s hot-hot world where gardens still grow, where there are grandchildren ¾ grandchildren to plant cucumber seeds.

 

iii

I never made it out of a child’s wishes lost in the breeze

attached by prayer

                    to duck-down dandelion seeds

 

one time I ate yellow dandelion flowers

with a poor man

in his slum lord’s yard

where the sun sets

over abandoned factories

 

iv

the stage is set

giant Ronald-McDonald balloons

are parading through

the mean streets

of the American City

anchored by flatbed trucks

filled to the rails with children

wearing church robes

and goggles playing television

 

Dry skin

Knocking knees

All the kids

Stand and sing

Fuck the Billionaires!

 

 

v

I watched the parade go by with her. She had little suns in her eyes. It made me want to hold her hand and catch candy with my other hand. I wanted to watch the balloons disappear around the corner, year after year. She asked me if I would follow them. Follow them down a rose petal road where we would walk unto our death and she had rose petals tattooed on her skin.

 

vi

the cities of men

cannot keep up

with all the

            PEOPLE

                        PUSHING

                                    out of

                                                PUSSIES

they just slide right out onto the curb

 

in a deplorable adorable infant herd

stampeding highways of the Midwest

 

babies toddling

on wobbly legs

heads bobbling

on licorice necks

 

(an industrial revolution made asphalt for their sensitive heads)

 

                                    they charge the LED billboards

                                                blazing the light of lipstick ads over hordes

                                                            of feeder pigs filled to the snouts with hormones                                                                                                                 and demons

 

JESUS! Find us another cliff already!

 

vii

I stood on a cliff. With her. Holding her hips.

 

viii

One time a teacher told me the best way to understand history is to study war. My parents wouldn’t get a divorce. God doesn’t like those for some reason. There is a story in the Bible where the pharaoh wouldn’t believe the plagues were from God. What took that king so long? I believe atoms are mostly empty space. I believe in atom bombs.