god is an American
god is a Baptist preacher
fingering your mother
behind a revival tent
god is a priest
who shoots your baby
with an uzi full of holy water
god is the monsignor who sodomized your brother
god is a plague carrier
god is a destroyer of men
god hates your gay marriage
god sold the first bump of fentanyl to your junkie sister
god is Fox news
god is a high school drop out who sells used cars
god has a concealed carry permit
god formed a militia
god gave us a sexually transmitted president
god has nations buried in his basement
god is the voice whispering in the ears of tyrants
god is a compound burning in Waco
god is a nuclear warhead
god is a plane crashing into the world trade center
god is the Westboro Baptist Church picketing a soldier’s funeral
god killed Jesus
god is an American
Tag: America
Categories
frankly, my dear…
the south is on fire
not in that charming
general sherman sort of way
the north is unemployed
so they elected a german
grand wizard of real estate
to be our next failure
son of a scottish housekeeper
who makes jokes about émigré
the west is busy crushing red Indians
our national past time has always been
genocide and polluting waterways
take heart, americans
there were only mass stabbings yesterday
and i’m fairly sure
lady liberty just miscarried
baby new year
blood is running down ellis island
into muddied waters of the bay
melt down the scales of justice
brass knuckles
will have their say
Categories
at night
it is not my place
to anguish on his behalf
but i do
i fear he lies awake at night
thinking his life
is someone else’s dream
and wondering
if they are enjoying it
Categories
the bigger bomb
i blame
the self esteem movement
of the 1970’s
for our loss of humility
me-monster generations
of inflated egos
with honorable mention ribbons
butterfly blinking their vapid eyes
this is america
we’re more concerned
with the packaging
than the contents
of our
food
entertainment
government
character
conscience
watch a super bowl half time show
to learn
why other countries hate us
but what more
can we expect
from a country founded
on the impossible
a world to colonize
an ocean away
puritans turned pentecostals
politicians
who invented
the bigger bomb
committing genocide
legislating slavery
as they handle snakes
solicit our vote
and speak in tongues
it began to notice it midsummer
when i initiated the ritual
of my daily
life affirming
early evening
bicycle rides
.
my perfect aerial
machine so blue
cutting through
a synthetic mist
of suburban dryer vent exhaust
lavender lilac and vanilla scented chemicals
emitted from the latest
maytag gag-o-matic
into one bastard cloud
.
i decided
.
all of suburban cincinnati is covered in a
gently revolting incidental smog
of old lady perfume
.
in this gloaming time
the cul-de-sac wives
huddle into two groups
.
those who drink wine and smoke
while waiting for the pills to kick in
and those who just drink wine
while waiting for the pills to kick in
.
bitching about their husbands on cue
as they stand indignant
in various shades of pink velour yoga pants
at the end of their driveways
.
just far enough away
so the enemy
won’t hear
.
the hot-boxed group
of matching husbands
wearing
“i pay the mortgage and the only place
i have any privacy from that bitch and these kids
is the fucking garage”
t-shirts
whist drinking middling domestic imports
in a town whose pricey micro brews they can’t afford
.
all to protect the delicate sensibilities
of the lord of the flies children
playing between them
on tonka battery powered humvees
bedecked with
nerf machine gun turrets
smuggling
duct taped half-chewed barbies
with their eyes gouged out
to tiny-tot thailand
.
i get the sense
there is death in the water
a key mineral lacking
in our national diet
.
the country is filled
with these fleeting nightmares
.
communities of sheep
vying for space at a diseased trough
.
american wastelands
.
where the coffee tastes of bad choices
and everyone is waiting
for the kids to be old enough
to get a divorce
.
Categories
redeploy
the news man says rebels have once
again taken over parts of iraq
and all i can think of is
that blonde haired
blue eyed boy
they captured
in a convoy
the one they took video of
with guns to his head
then beheaded
before they burned his body
and strung it up in the street
that blonde haired
blue eyed boy who went to my high school
who died for a government’s lies
planting seeds of democracy
that blonde haired
blue eyed boy
who is the reason
the little community where i grew up
will never stop hanging up yellow ribbons
oh yes
mr. president
redeploy
as if we ever left
let’s make sure these wars are mistakes
that keep on giving
Categories
greetings from the colonies
it is sacrilege for me to say
i don’t care for the 4th of july
staking our independence perpetually
on someone else’s claim
i’m not unpatriotic for saying
every death in battle
is a death in vain
blowing our thumbs off
detonating explosives
is an american tradition
if we love our troops so much
let’s stop finding new and improved ways
for them to die
we sailed on a refugee ship from religious oppression
so that we could become more oppressive
the dutch wouldn’t let us stay more than a few nights
they didn’t want our puritanical bullshit
fucking up their children’s minds
my grandmother’s ghost
beaded with genocide
told me
you can’t discover a place
where other people are already living
america was built on a native graveyard
that’s why our culture is plagued
by angry poltergeists
and our child’s hands are glued
to a static tv
listening to paul revere
scream
they’re here
the british weren’t so bad
besides
i love tea
Categories
terminal
my priority was silence
after being weighed
measured
scanned
and cavity searched
by tsa agents
i just wanted to find a quiet chair near my gate
within the noisy LAX terminal
preferably a dark corner
with no other passengers within twenty feet
lacking over-molested copies of the LA Times
and the pink sugary crumbs
of well traveled two year olds
ah, there it was
my weary feet and rolling carry-on
made their way toward flight deck utopia
a rounded blue row of seating
right by the tinted night windows
my eyes were swollen from crying
i didn’t want to leave the city
or the love i had come to find there
unable to read, think, have a smoke or a drink
all i had at that moment
was a peaceful spot
in the airport
before my red eye back home
that’s when he walked over
disturbing my solitary meditation
a learned looking man
accompanied by a worn brown leather miami university attache
i suspect he felt safer near a fellow buckeye
smiling as he read my sweatshirt
which reads
college of mortuary science cincinnati
he asked if he could sit
certainly i replied
this area is annexed for Ohio
we exchanged life stories
24 hours he had been on a layover
in Los Angeles
on his way back from China
he said he was a professor
who had been sent there
to teach the chinese
how to slowly kill
the American economy
the exquisite irony
wasn’t lost on me
because he was positively green
his skin gray
eyes glassy
silvery hair dusted black
from breathing particulate from coal plants
and suicide net surrounded factories
floating in the Beijing air for the past three weeks
his shaking hands
pulled out a stash of respirator masks
still in his pocket
the sight horrified me
it was the first time i realized that all was lost
the human race is near extinction
that inconvenient truths are
merely the tip of a melted iceberg
given the reality of irreversible damage
so
i got up and threw away
the remainder of my give-a-fuck
hearing the girl from ipanema went walking
now boarding boomed
as i traipsed down the ramp to the tin can
not caring as much if it safely landed
full of the knowledge
we’re building cell phone towers
on the corpse of a planet
Categories
for john
he sits back all kerouac
with the holy city rising behind him
he is
the embodiment
of everything a lesser poet ever wanted to say
but wasn’t brave enough to write
he is
my america
he is
the way a man should wear a hat
he is
beautiful
this morning my heart wishes to emerge
from my red door
having my feet
find a cobblestone street
in London
on another day it would be old Bombay
or the day
i waved goodbye
to Powhatan
my mind has remembered
what i was before time began
mistress of her own molecules
now my soul is insistent
upon traveling backward
*For John Burroughs, peace to you, old friend.