Americana Part 3

1.
How deep this concave thing runs
one can’t say…really.
As for curbside Toyotas and Chevys,
they slice into the horizon
of manicured lawns with mailboxes
across playground ballfields
and sunset California freeways
beside the borders of hollow, swelling ocean—
I’m told these objects are closer than they may appear.


2. (E Pluribus Unum)
The tollbooth coin in my pocket
says E Pluribus Unum: We were many,
but now we're only one.
And in the Midwest on Pulaski Ave.
There's a church with God towering
over the altar. It must be Him
with a white beard, and gold-leaf scepter.
On the corner is a butcher shop
with an animated neon sign:
Neon pig, pig, pig. Grinder.
Neon sausage, sausage, sausage.
Where there were many pigs,
there's just tubes of meat.

Pulaski's named for a polish general
who died a hero in the revolution
and for his ancestors who died
in meatpacking districts like cattle,
like pigs through the grinder.

3. (Blues Honey)

I put on a Grateful Dead cassette
A late show, 1995 or 94, maybe.
Jerry's forgotten the words
where he slips up he hums
a broken pentatonic lullaby
seeping through the speakers
less like muddy water
more like honey dripping
from a cone broken with a stone.
More like a bee whose sting is gone,
but persists in the warble and buzz.

4.(Addiction)

They want to drill for oil in Alaska
In a place they call ANWR
an acronym a lot like the Arabic
anwar, which means luminous.
The glaciers in our national parks
are melting. In thirty years
they'll be gone.
When the last ice castle melts
We'll be left to sort the used to bes
from the onces and the onces from the nevers.

Our president said we're addicted to oil
But he wasn't the first.
The old man said that our leaders
like violent criminals kill
just to get a little fix of what's left.
Someday, maybe they'll walk off into the night
lit blue with the flicker of a service station
flashing SELF into the hydrogen cold.

5. (Becky is a Trotskyite)

It must have been October
When I saw you skipping
like a school girl fawning
at a former Weatherman
with wild grey hair & thick
round glasses.
He's known girls like you before
given them the same irrelevant books
by Lenin, Trotsky, Mao.
I was wearing my baseball cap
sorry that the home team lost,
sorry that I'd let you down,
sorry that you just wanted
a better world I couldn't give.

6. (Recently)

I've been thinking of writing a letter
or just sending a heartfelt text.
I've been thinking of moving back home
with my folks. I could sleep in the basement
with my feet in the hall.
I could get a teaching job and practice
a new from of Buddhism that involves sitting
under a fortress of couch cushions.

7. (It's Raining. It's pouring)

The old man bumped his head
and could barely get up in the morning.
When he did a brain-scan revealed
something nebulous and unexpected.
A spot, not death, but an inconvenience
that spelled anxiety and hours
in toxic waiting rooms.
Months later he awoke deaf
in his left ear.
Now I only pretend to talk about the Bears
when I call on my cell.

8. (Higher Learning)

I studied philosophy in school.
It was a waste of time.
For all their tweed, and musty
beards and libraries, my professors
couldn't teach me to think,
because they couldn't teach
me what was real.
Funny I used to think myself
a well-prepared student.



Continued...