She locked her hands on my elbow
As I packed away my chrysanthemums
I nestled their pot in a cardboard box.
And fixed stems where her thrown shoe had landed
“I can’t bring these. Customs won’t let me.”
Then softly she whispered, “Don’t go.”

She nudged the box with her big toe
She wanted them in case I might return
I said my mother wouldn’t neglect them
She promised to remember the water
But her dead soil never nourished me
Still, she sighed and cried, “Please. Don’t go.”

She reached for the box when I walked past
And said she could keep them for me.
I deferred that my mother would not neglect them.
She argued she had never killed anything.
I said she had never helped anything grow.
And, yet, she said, “Don’t go.”

I left her the sleeves of CDs
Our sounds had become too mixed.
I could not pull my rock from her pop
My Bach from her Pussy Cat Dolls
She threw them at me when she refused
And still, she said, “Don’t go.”

When I had packed my last bit of baggage,
She said she would not see me to the airport
But insisted she wanted to call me.
I turned my phone off until the plane landed
So, the first thing I heard in my new world
Was a message saying, “Don’t go.”

I remember Cape Cananveral
Though I was many years too late.
When a long rocket’s red and starry eye.
Lifted our eyes in commingled fate.

Nothing unites us like destruction.
O rings twist as the GIs pivot
Speeches and rockets are fueled with gunpowder.
As towers climb and Rosies rivet.

Why do they build our rockets?
As they give each other medals and applaud
When did we let them trade in our exploration
for a Tesla-branded escape pod

We fuck stone.
We drive our bones into the dust.
I thrust my hard honed hips.
You moan and curl your slender bore.
As we fuck stone.

We seek our needed nutrients.
We pull our soft minerals.
Mining,
Shafting,
Drilling,
Pounding.
Together, we pulverize where we came from.
We dig until there’s nothing left
But scrag
and slag
and shag.

We fuck stone.
We transmute our metals into rust.
I bury my fingers into your loam.
I mine.
You mine.
We each others mine
As we fuck stone.

Find your mountain if you want your tale told.
Climb toward the luminescence past the peak
Then your sunsets will be woven with gold.

Beware the ballads that are bought and sold.
Set fire to pianos whose keys do not speak,
“Find your mountain if you want your tale told.”

Do not tarry in the taverns of old.
Spurn their juniper spirits that leave you weak
then your sunsets will be woven with gold.

Resist cinnamon’s scent for her soft hold
will delay you while your instinct wants to shriek,
“Find your mountain if you want your tale told!”

Steel your mettle with your heart’s own code
by lifting your character beyond critique
then your sunsets will be woven with gold.

The great myths do not belong to the meek
But to heroes who thine own self shall seek.
Find your mountain if you want your tale told
then your sunsets will be woven with gold!

I’m Out

Fuck it, I’m out.
It’s gotten to that point where the rat’s got to swim.
You all seem so intent on looking out for that prime number
The one that doesn’t divide very well.
The one that always equals itself when everything is square.
It’s time I took the goddamn hint.

This isn’t my country anymore.
If it ever was, it was because I was blind and deluded.
Suckered into a mass hysteria dream
Where we are all convinced we could do better.
When we stood firm on the ground with reason.

No, that’s just a trick.
We’ve never evolved much past our tree swinging days
Take that both ways
One’s a religion and the other’s a state.
Weren’t the pillar and the rock supposed to be
Dare I say it -
Separate but equal?

What for?
I paid my dues, said my pledges and did my time.
All it got was me was high enough
To see just how it operates.
I served, learned, lived,
breathed, marched, swore,
defended, amended, rear-ended,
contrited,
delighted,
ignited.

That’s bit is supposed to look like a torn flag
Clever?
Cleverer than a constitution.
Cleverer than a highly cherished societal rule.
A hummurabi’s code of our generational search for justice.
Where laws are just bad memories.
Callous exclusion of little details.
The poor, the disdvantaged, the infirm, the broken
the callous, the jaded, the hated, US.

That part looks like nothing.
It’s pure slight of hand.
An optical trick to simulate depth.

Can we call ourselves civilized?
When so much goes wrong
When so many really fucking suffer.
It seems kinda broken.
All around us jagged and burnt out doll houses.
Each of us coming to terms
with awakeing from that same mass hysteria dream.
A collective consciousness,
deigned and designed
to enforce its enrollment.
A controlling custom of cutscene contraptions.

What if we got it all wrong, folks?
What if we actually invented the devil.
We built a machine and system so broken
That it tailors our own personal unhappily ever after.
Full of everything wrong with the world.

We fight for our happiness.
We look for a deeper meaning in the words and the songs.
But it might be time to forget all that.
To put away childish things
And to remember
what’s important.

And to remember
That the only alternative is.
A collective and chorused,
“fuck it, I’m out.”