bush America

Here is a picture of modern American ignorance in poem form:

bush America

welcome to bush America
with steel steeples and mortar churches.
brass bells are steadfast as
ignorance in narrow sermons
screamed by grey-beard men while
wrinkled women wearing sequined caps
crack jokes, and even youth
proclaim hate with red-text letters.
when did we become the bastard
child of religion?

we've always been in bush America.

welcome to bush America
with media machines and inked-dark headlines.
starched shirts on fox news spread
videos of "blasphemies" in Arabic and
cindered red white and blue stomped
out by canvas sandals, and metered
lines of sergeant-clad Koreans
parading warheads chanting 미워하다 (hate).
when did we become naive
believing propaganda?

we've always been in bush America.

welcome to bush America
with join us or die mentalities.
pale men with ear pieces deny habeas corpus,
for placard signs are unpatriotic,
and green berets fillet Iraq for
missing mass destructions
since a lie can call down full-force
military might, right or otherwise.
when did we become so
presidentially polarized?

we've always been in bush America.

welcome to bush America where
non-Christian is Pagan and
Pagan is heathen and heathen
is Muslim, right mr. president?

Old English, Pinot Grigio

In idea, one glass of Pinot Grigio makes the mind productive. The refreshing sips of white wine should ease the tongue and calm a week's worth of stress. Each drink should increase that creative self awareness that births our poets' thoughts. One glass should be that panacea, that oracle. One glass. I drank a bottle.

Bottle gone, stumbling through the basement, tripping over cats and leather cases, plummeting down, ass to ground. And by my slumped, unwired body lied a printed, stapled page entitled "Thomas Dallum."

What was this? The reading assigned to muck and skim through? Yes it was, and I began.

The beginning paragraph was dry enough like dated wines in musty cellars. Though, now drunk, the numbers all seemed the same. Then suddenly, holy fuck, the language changed. Was it just my wine-shot eyes and spinning mind? Or was it something penned in Greek, Polish, or even Japanese? Hell if I knew, so I did what any neo-Bukowskian would do: I grabbed a sixer of Corona and started drinking.

One cap popped, one beer down, the words began to flip from page to air like ink black jumping jacks. The characters were quite phonetic, sounding how the proper spellings should, but something still seemed wrong. Problem solved, drink another beer.

And another.

The ending E's and misplaced consonants then rearranged themselves, and bam, it's English. A man in foreign lands amidst a court of honored lords. A wondrous organ sounding tones so fabulous to make Olympus jealous. Thrushes and starlings soaring to the beat of such magnificence.

Another beer.

Another.

(Elapse of God knows how long)

Then I awoke, dizzied and disoriented with a piece of paper hanging from my face.

Most say never drink and drive. I say never drink and read.