From the Mud

Would you leave it to the
sun scrapes on my painted face
to gauge the depths of my twisted fall?
Or would you ask for the lies
Of a sick-born, bottom-bred malice-maker,
a true follower of his own might.

I’d tell of a tree
with helium-filled balloons
floating with no roots.

And beneath it
the girl prayerful
with a giant tear
drooping from her ear lobe
like a pearl in a clam shell
or a diamond in a bed of rock.

Don’t ask of me the bright stories
Told nicely by firewood a’flicker
When the chat turns to the oft told
And we all smile with our teeth a’glitter.

With Ali Baba I put twelve dwarves
whistling while they work,
And in Michael the archangel’s stead
A Muppet of fur and plaster
Chinese make/American model,
taking on the Devil in a graphic novel
about the triumph over sin
by the white horse that is our Uncle Sam.

Because don’t you see? We’ve
All lived longer than literature
And in literature’s light we still breed.
But we bear what we beat,
it's history we beat,
And we consume and consume
til we tweet.

(Anon.)

The girl in the mud
Beneath the floating tree
Cries out.
She cries out
The tinny note
Of a tone deaf
Blind man
Munching on his last
Meal:

Apple sauce and pork chow mein.

(He’s never been to China
Nor will he
But he knows of the gentle swoop
the wall takes on the northeast curve
of China, right before Russia becomes Russia,
And the rice fields turn to steppes. Beautiful.
He saw it in a movie starring Tom the Cruise
and swears now, forgetful, he saw it in person.)


~contributer