Castigo

 

He is our castigo

We see him approach as smoke

From a dying lantern whirling down

Into the city sewer grates

And he is our castigo

A combover ratty and vain

Are greasy fingers trembling

With Diet Coke jitters

And he is our castigo

For amends never made

The ghost of Garcia Lorca

Whirs across the Atlantic to face him

Wailing a song down the St. Lawrence

To land in Chicago

One of the man's towers

Borders the dark river there

And Federico's ghost approaches him

On the threshold of the building

Donald Trump Variation #1

 

3 Acronym Poems

 

AAECA TNNA
against todos
all nós
empire nascemos
cultures anarquistas
always

ATFUHC
army
of
those
fucked
by
US
health
care

Time & Foreboding

 

species dwindle and fade

trapped in a proliferation

of weeds and algae

hypoxic

or they overheat

and drop from the sky

onto blowing debris

and pooling sands

they succumb to the plow

and the paver

and slowly vanish

and how will we go under

buy the farm

bite the dust

we have uncoupled time

from the seasons

and find ourselves

inside of an unraveling...

will we migrate

to the final safe places

wherever they may be

and await our fate?

JGJG

 

Jerry Garcia João Gilberto

João Gilberto Jerry Garcia

I walked through the gates

And the music was quiet

Discreet even

Each of them was down a hill

Looking small down there

Doing this thing you could overhear

If you chose to

Working in miniatures

Like they were painting ornate tiles

In the middle of a forest

And if you gazed upon the images

Glazed onto the clay

You heard song

night of, day after

 

if that m'fer wins

I'm still gonna wake up

make coffee

drink it

stretch

cook some eggs

teach a couple classes

maybe go to miller meadow

try to see some deer

America Boring

 

America's become boring

Ho hum it can't imagine

Anything new

Ideas that were dumb

500 years ago

Remain dumb

Stuff happens

Nothing is learned

The same guy runs for president

Three times in a row

Says the same dumb crap

Stuff repeats

Falter glitch skip

Like knocking a vase of flowers

Onto the floor

And cleaning it up

One million times

Boring

mysteries, time

 

good rock bands

that came after my youth

that i don't know about

my body changed

i needed less rock

more monk more morton feldman

or maybe bands

after my youth

really are worse

but i can't know that

because i don't hear them

and when i do

it's not the same body

not the same mind

that does