"Huck and Jim," "A Protest, a Demonstration," and "People Get Ready"

Huck and Jim

There’s no small explosion
when Godzilla meets the Golem
on the mall, each wielding his own
flagpole, thrusting like
the Washington Monument at soft
rectal tissue—or hasn’t there
been a contest for the heart of young
America since the summer
of the history of love, a child’s drawing
of a male clown and a female
clown—perhaps dancing—her arms
wide like going to wrap him
or bust his chops, and he speechless
at the bubbles rising vertical from her
head, and aren’t we all smashed
together bad enough without the eight
hour day, the elementary school, the final
exam, and no more
contraception ‘til the sun goes black—
and they’re raging and breaking and putting
on a show for the tractor pulling millions
hyped into the submission of superiority,
a parliament of fowles rolling eggs
on the big house lawn while
Jim Dandy takes his place in the soup queue,
Huck Finn just behind, and they
laryngitis whisper: it ain’t worth being
civilized, advertised, mesmerized,
or cauterized, and there’s
no use standing
in souvenir lines

A Protest, A Demonstration

Brilliant blueclouds of the white
sky shining thru hot on the tops
of pine and oak and hairy heads
at last out under it and
away from snide illusions
of a pickled world also larded
up with its own importance, truly
worthless and suckerpunching
brains of small children before
birth and constantly after birth
and possibly after death, broad-
casting into soul and bones through
microwaves, x-rays, broadband FM
and usually telephones: ringing,
“Hello, this is corpse residence,
didn’t I tell you not to call
as I am out today sawing
office buildings in half to make
way for trees and at least
blackberries”—it’s all hilarious
now and this is how you dance—
sweet flesh ripening under sun
beams smiling back into faces
of blind worms chased by carniverous moles—
blue teethed and willing to chew
and shit back earth, not
unuseable plastic products of the first
world—it’s a day,
                                    such
a day
            as this that puts me
in mind of heaven, only real
now and shining hot,
rain or shine, come to think of it,
and this is mostly good without
working

People Get Ready

Laughing in the supermarket under
the illusion of plenty and high
on the propaganda cereal mile—
early senile or mad,
too stubborn stupid to shut
up and go home with just a bag
of flour—look at the seductive
colored varieties of you,
the possibilities of the human
on shelves decked out in
artificial—

a gambler knows his place
as a loser at the table,
phrasing his options
only in terms of the cards and boards
and roulettes—addicted to risk,
the thrill of defeat—addled
so he can only come back to this
arena tomorrow—
shoppers are the gamblers
of the marketplace—
born to lose
and born to live to
try again

People get ready
for the have to have;
People get ready to lose
your figures in that bag
of varieties

The wait is on for living