Military Industry: A Child Can Make Mustard Gas

As boys we did our best
to live up to the president’s
idea of going to the moon,
pooling our chemistry sets
and toolkits, borrowing
the kitchen helmet
and books from aunts
with drafted brothers
while the West Coast
learned to get high
in horned-rimmed glasses
and the rest of the country
waited for California
to slide into the Pacific.

So many Greek syllables on the way to the stars,
calculus ifs spinning out escape velocities
prone to variable entangled radiance, quanta
in elongated shadows for every action
a shadow action, the gist always close at hand

in the Bunsen burner’s feeble, steady hope
we took our cue to fold equal parts
sulfur and iron filings over a rising blue glow
enveloping so that it separated into stages,
pellets to stash away in test tubes
while we concentrated hydrochloric acid
following the formula for century gases
in the World Book Encyclopedia.

(Tacoma 2000)

Passage from Allen Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra" on War

Different from a bad guess.
The war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet:
Black Magic language,
formulas for reality--
Communism [substitute Terrorism today] is a 9 letter word
used by inferior magicians with
the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold
--funky warlocks operating on guesswork,
handmedown mandrake terminology
...
Communion of bum magicians
congress of failures from Kansas & Missouri
working with the wrong equations
Sorcerer's Apprentices who lost control
of the simplest broomstick in the world:
Language
O longhaired magician come home take care of your dumb helper
before the radiation deluge floods your livingroom,
your magic errandboy's
just made a bad guess again
that's lasted a whole decade.

--Allen Ginsberg, "Wichita Vortex Sutra"

[Note: Line breaks and indentation lost in blog mode.]

Land of the F

These are the times we talked about in grade school,
picture books exchanged for a ruler
to hold its place on the shelf,
the biggest planes and payloads
spread out on our table—
rising suns uber alles—
dynasties of masses stocked
to bus minions in prattling formation,

now cameras and locators trace forms
closing in on
our word,
a word to
speak for
our word, weak
in might, speaking
here not there to own
skies there
tear empty here.

Speak out here,
our word lost,
America's mouth is crossed
in twists and plots
in footage no longer here
on the way, already
in the way

I am leaving,
cancelled cable, wireless
not to see the sky their sky
as nouns and satellites
service no threat to rally
after the salute fires off
our hearts
paid to divide
to take our place
in America's bubble
of bullets, charging into your sunset,
the sky breaking down on you in red is not yours.

(Tacoma 2004)

Poetics Today

Each to her own, but a poem is just a poem,
no matter broken enough, detritus
stands out class to write his names
a hundred times, I will I will, I won't I won't
while wily ifs loop in no longer loopy and talking with one's others,
but a step on the tube in the wrong election
just short of Palestine and Guernica
and the intimate moments barricaded under
the clashing of gods that make you bob
under two roofs, man and wife,
portable, unfolding theism Americans pin their tails to
in nostalgic retrofitted retroviruses
uplifting lost causes in the grandeur of Rushmore filling the preemptive metropolis—
as if smiles for the latte meant more than good training—
ticks off the lonely widower, depending on that Joe.

Time to leave Joe and return to a bulletin of tunas fished to death—
may I recommend the marbled horse sushi
or holding out for Petri-grown chicken thighs on the horizon
along with body condoms to preserve sterility and perfect health.
May I recommend a man or a woman, but hey, it's your life.
The penguins imitate German nature and are taken. The “birds and bees”
are for the birds, more vulgar euphemisms to put off fucking.
Categories map us, chain us to ourselves.
Possums are liberated, leave little ones wound up on the back porch.
Goodbye Franco, goodbye Koizumi, goodbye Bush—
may the aerial bayonets of your visits find out your secret dyspepsia.
Imperialism is on automatic toilet.

Shelters

No one has the gumption to give them up,
but no more crackers and blankets
when we stick our heads in,
souvenirs of wars flown over to forget,
rebuild ruined schools, temples, cathedrals
as if no hatred had broken mornings,
just tiny domed ducking grounds
growing small and mossy out of soft pools
leaving them musty after iron doors go missing.
The dry ones make great getaways
for young early trials wedging walls.
Once tragedy falls we’ll all be scolded
just for holding candles, so hold me
as if the world were closing its skies
leaving us in our last desperate embrace.
No one will suffer this way, let alone
be left to repeat it, until genuine caring sinks in.
Common cause waits outside on camera,
a small price to take hearts to safety,
hesitant, generic gray souls.

Exit

It doesn’t take X-ray vision to see the videobomb
Of a cave’s quantum entanglements
With a desert spreading its deeds and constitution
Of wells raising the living into a hell of greed.

If I were a better person I would stand
In the middle of I-5 by a base
With a sign that says “brake for peace”
Until I was dead or arrested,
censored or not.

If I were to stay,
Had faith it could come around
I would try, sacrifice.
But I am like everyone else

And there are still places free of drones,
So before it all wakes from Hollywood
and all that hate, I'm on my way.