Galoshes
Swollen belly of my era:
*its plum pit and purple heart
slumped to a blue pollute:
* whiskied interrogations
* goulashes of one war, Hummer of another
* gong gong rockers
* rockets and a million canteens
camouflage jeans dragging
up the O-God road.
Which wish and which preamble?
cart wheel, over we went,
barrel downed in the trenches
* mountain crotches
* orders to better
* between rocks and harder rocks
* between all we'd ever
barrack bullies
tent hackers
through
The nations gone bonkers
* you here
* quackery of purpose
*sliced tin lunch
*armless mountains
hugging the road
the tent flaps
flesh flaps
Onward dust bowler
*all wags and no bark
*all tree and no bark either
*all flags, no wave
*of another other-than
We no longer no
You hummer-ding of the world.
Those Who Live
In vast cities
as I
homeless street sweepers laminated sky
ask:
Are there ones who, in cotton dirndls
lunch from baskets in fields of wheat,
carry babies in linen slings,
walk with shoeless sound in gorse and bliss?
Are there still houses with slate roofs
dripping sun to a pail
by daisies
beneath eaves --
For we know only
tracks of all kinds
flapped doors with hasps
torrents dirty water
rushed to gutters
mouths open
to the doctor's flat stick the ah
of urban ill.
