HOW
how shall
all this remembered
find its way
into the the books
be retold
by the old folks
taught
in the clsssroom?
will this desperate spin
you are Hell-bent
on manifacturing
find its way from
your dizzy life-ignoring,
image-igonoring
brains onto
revered pages?
or will history be
your bitch
as truth is now?
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?
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
SPIT AND
we polish
the statues
of those
we imprisoned,
tortured, killed
bring out our
Muses of
history and, yes,
poetry
fiction is apt, though,
to re-cast this scene
knowing the story told
false to fact, unless
true to the certainty
of our
hypocrisy
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
SETTLERS
the settlers came
to
grow
their crops
farm
the land
build their cities
write their stories
transform
the landscape
kill
the truth
bury it
for the rest of time
poems 2 die for