I Burned The Flag On Independence Day

If you think it’s easy to burn The Flag
There’s a lot more to it,
You just can’t bend over and set a match to it,
It has to be soaked in something
Like Oil
Or Naptha
So I got some Crude Oil and soaked The Flag
Real good
Until it was black and unrecognizable
Except for its rectangular shape
Which I didn’t like so I twisted it around
With a stick and then soaked it again with
Naptha
And then I took a wooden match
Flicked it with my thumbnail
And watched the flame of the match
Flare up
And caught the burning whiff of sulfur in my nostrils
And then, bending over I lit the nearest corner of The Flag.

The Flash burned my eyes, The Blast knocked me back
And I was blinded for a few minutes
When I opened my eyes, The Flag was there
Inside the flames, burning but not being consumed
The black cloud of smoke rolled off of it like a burning oil well
But The Flag was straight and the colors were bright
And out of the center came
A regiment of British soldiers followed by
The Three Patriots: Drummer, Fifer, Standard Bearer
Only they were skeletons and their bones clacked as they marched and played
Their Death March
Then I saw the prison at Andersonville with its Line of Death
And Sherman’s Army like a fiery cannonball burning through the South

The Naptha
Exploded and there was a Marine on Guadalcanal with a flamethrower
Charring the bodies of Japanese soldiers who were holed up in caves
The USS Arizona raised to the surface in Pearl Harbor
And the voices of the dead cried out
Then it sunk again as the Burning Flag flared up
This time into two mushroom clouds
Where I could see the ashes of the children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
The Naptha
Flared again and a little Vietnamese girl ran down the road
Her body on fire
And then there were the faces of the dead at My Lai

There were flags in two windows of the twin towers at the World Trade Center
Targets for the guided missiles that hit them
There are flags on the coffins of sons and daughters, fathers and mothers
Coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq
There are flags flying in America
Flags of Aggression and Warfare
Flags of Oppression and Torture
Flags of Perdition
And nightmarish, gory
Flags of Gluttony and Greed

I looked at the charred remains of
The Flag
And the visions ceased
But when I looked again it was whole
And bright and clear
As if it had been exorcised
And made pure and had become
A Flag of Peace
Then it vanished and was gone forever.

When Uranus Is In Retrograde

When Uranus is in retrograde:
Tongues of pentacostal fire leap on the heads of priests
Who anoint and baptize with mustard seeds,
Voltaire pops out from under a manhole cover
Wielding an AK-47 and shouting the old adage:
“When the last priest is strangled with the guts
Of the last politician,” and then adds:
“In the backseat of the last automobile.”

When Uranus is in retrograde:
Startled Frenchmen stop cursing Americans
And fill gas tanks with wine
Shouting, “No more fossil fuel!”
And Charles Gusswelle has a face transplant
So he can become Hemingway
And walk the rues in Montmartre
Savoring the re-moveable feast.

There is a man who says that living in Louisiana
Is like living in a teakettle,
Another man says one man’s junk is another man’s gold,
Sartre says, "I am or I am not, I am where I am not,"
But I say when Uranus is in retrograde
You may not know your coon-ass from a hole in the ground.

Vive la difference!

Blackberry Flash II

The half moon is slowly rising,
In the wake of Blackberry’s pulse,
Like lightning in the other room.

Outside the dogs begin to howl,
To quench the light of Blackberry,
That works constantly without rest.

Blackberry receives a signal,
From the small Magellanic Cloud,
And tries to establish contact.

Sensing keyboard intervention,
Someone trying to make a call,
Blackberry takes evasive moves,

With its on-off switch disabled,
Repulsed by touch of human hand,
Blackberry provides no answer.

Making Contact

(A translation from the Voynich Manuscript)

I have grown so tired of this human existence
I want to return to my home,
There is little more for me to do here
And I can hear my ancestors calling,
I long to hear the cry of native birds
And the sound of water in the stream,
These things that I can also do here
But that are just not the same,
My home is under the double star
And the beauty of the star clusters,
Fill the yellow sky with wonder,
Outside this place in Andromeda
Where I will once again sit and play the guitar.
Tomorrow I will try to make contact.

Blackberry Flash

Lightning in the other room,
The opening of a secret tomb,
A sepulcher of doom and gloom,
The half moon slowly rising.

Walking toward the pulsating flash,
Expecting to be turned to ash,
As another impending stock market crash,
Is reported on the webnews.

Enshrouded in a paper towel,
As the dogs outside begin to howl,
And the refrigerator begins to growl,
At the black hole of human nature.

Stumbling in the middle of night,
Turning on the bathroom light,
To quench the thirst of the Blackberry’s plight,
That’s too busy to forget things.

Out in the small Magellanic Cloud,
A pulsar flashes its message avowed,
To the silence of the gathering crowd,
And the Blackberry tries to make contact.

Working constantly without a rest,
The Blackberry runs a silent test,
To ensure it’s safe within its nest,
With its on-off switch disabled.

Somewhere in another land,
A Blackberry sits on a night stand,
Repulsed by the touch of the human hand,
That picks it up to answer.

A Tearful Lament

A Country Western Song
In The Key Of "A"


When we first met
You used to laugh a lot,
Then something happened to you,
I don’t know what,
You told me you felt different
And you didn’t know why,

Then you started crying
Artificial tears,
And I started thinkin’
About all the years,
That we’d been together
And everything we’d done.

Well it has been a long time
I hope you’re doing well
With artificial tears,
You can’t really tell,
If someone’s sad and lonely
Or just a little blue.

I think I’ll call you up
On the telephone,
To see if you
Have a happy home,
I don’t mean to be pryin’
Into your private life.

And you’ll start crying
Artificial tears,
And I’ll be rememberin’
Those artificial years,
That we spent together,
And now they’re gone.