AT APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE

AT APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE

proceedings were held up
because the burgers and cokes
had not arrived

then they
        stopped shirts, swopped swords

slavery remained the elephant in the room

it was either kiss and makeup
or unconditional surrender

Arnold Schwartzenegger was playing General Grant
the Rock (naturally)
was playing the ghost of Stonewall Jackson
Charlie Sheen
was totally miscast as Robert E Lee

he rolled ten singles in succession
and so Vicksburg fell
and Pickett’s charge was defeated

unfortunately this doesn’t mean shit
because the Japs and the Krauts
invaded on alternate history Netflix

they promised to
have a comnerative reunion meeting
when the time felt right

slavery remained the elephant in the room

(a room
      nobody bothered to, didn’t
even think to clean)

ROSE?

ROSE?

is that
a rose

or is it
a bullet hole?

red rose
red rose

so many of them
slaughtered in the snow
days of
    York and
Lancaster

tried to stitch those
wounds together

but blood still leaking
through that tapestry

carnage
    somehow still
in your
    poetry

freeze
    framed you thought
for all
of history

not forever displaced
from theme to theme

JUNGLE GYM

JUNGLE GYM

I ate my jungle oats
you are your jungle oats
you ate my jungle oats
I ate your jungle oats

we ate our own and
each other’s jungle oats

not at the watering hole
but in bed together

you telling me that aliens
came to this planet Janet
tens of thousands of
years ago
    as is recorded on
scroll and parchment
to build the pyramids
and screw
      our woman

the former with sonic resonance
and photon matter creation
technology

           maybe, safe to say,
pretty much
the latter too

and you trying to tell
me that
    Noah’s Ark was actually
a saucer-shaped vehicle
(like alien craft on the cover
of an
Amazing Stories 50s Sci-Fi
magazine)

nothing more lewd or leering
than one of those aliens
desperate for
    the feeling of humanoid
tits and shit

and me making all sorts
of irreverent and disgusting
sexual puns
        during the entirety of
her discourse

obviously not the kind of
civilized fore and interplay
that would lead
      with neat evolutionary
procreative logic

to our own little
trans-linguistic
         conjugation

and most
intimate and
         nearest thing

to
cosmic encounter of
way more
   than three-dimensional kind