Goodreads
del.icio.us
My mother driving us towards the
Great Western Sugar Company Apartments
housing those German
prisoners of war just staring out at us
clinging to that tall chain link fence
U. S. soldier guards with pistols
dangling from their belts pacing
back & forth night & day pacing
I think mother got a kick out of
scaring us I still remember their eyes
so dark so sad & their fingers
reaching through the fence
like they wanted to touch us
real bad maybe love us
& my mother yelling Settle
down, you kids, as she slowed
for us to get a better look
& then she turned west
on Third Avenue so I could gawk
out the side window vent
with my big sister pinching
me & frightening me to death
Mark Saunders and ten others
made the Honor Roll
on national TV.
All of them Americans
under the age of twenty-seven.
The famous news anchorman said:
"In silence, here are eleven more."
I started counting
the uniform pictures of proud soldiers
and wishing they were not dead.
Then oh my god
there was Mark's picture.
More like a crummy snapshot.
Him looking kind of high
against the cockpit of a jet.
You don't expect to see
somebody you know.
Mark never knew it
but I fell in love with him
after Junior Prom
after we dumped our chicks
after we didn't get laid
after we jerked each other off
after we hooted it up
till sunrise
after we went for a mess of bacon
at Denny's.
That's when I fell in love
with Mark Saunders.
I should have but
I never got around to
telling him he had amazing hands.
i just don't care about the daily hundreds of…
how can i care about another hundred casualties
piles and piles mounting up in pounds of
dead meat on their streets
i don't care if the meat is theirs or ours
i don't care if it is men or women
chickens or children or donkeys
same as i don't care about the heaps of pounds of burgers dispensed
by mcdonald's in one year or twenty years or fifty
i am certain it must be in the billions by now but i will say this
at least that fast-meat giant puts out
for real exchange in return for its primetime
to show off its meat
only it's we who have to cough out the billions
for the tens upon tens of thousands of pounds of bloody
somewhat skinned and oft-times conveniently partially boned
and much too often so blown-to-bits-it-can't-be-shown
raw man-meat voraciously consumed by our t.v.s
to teach us not to care
where our consumption dare not matter anymore
and it does seem that it is working
because i do not care
but i do wonder
might the fluid nature of blood plasma become more frightening
in the last days when we all cave to wal-mart
each of us squeezed into its aisles there and hacking
out bucks for a high-wired much wider so much flatter new plasma t.v.
or might that fluidity become even more delicious more and more
thus suspending the red of its reds
even more extravagantly than ever before
like gloss lipstick on the whore we have not yet dreamed
because she can only be seen IF one is wide-awake
as she torpedoes thru our own front door
The Poet Spiel: Born out west to decent white farmers; same year the U.S. entered WWII; maverick child who made art which evolved as he matured intellectually through lifestyle changes leading to considerable national exposure. But in 1996, traumatic life/death illness abruptly halted his career. When his life was spared, he became reticent & for the first time ever, uncreative—until spring 1999—when he unearthed an urge to write, opening the pathway to become the Pushcart Prize nominated, devoted author, known for often iconoclastic poems, curiously human short stories & visual art published in scores of independent press journals. "Chained link" and "I might've told him" are taken from his chapbook come here, cowboy, come here (Pudding House, 2006).