Tape your windows.
Wear your camouflage.
It’s a shooter’s holiday.
Hide your loved ones in the garage.
There’s a death arcade
and many real wild rides.
There’ll be bullets lodged
in some unlucky hides.
There are craft displays,
model grassy knolls.
There’ll be guns for sale,
Colts and Carcanos.
It’s the best day of the year
for folks to flee,
the dawning of the sniper jamboree.
The protoplasmic gun belt
hangs low on the hips of the world.
Shooting speed into cows
is the latest rap. Now they are lowing
the brain damaged mice to sleep
in their electronic cabanas.
A schizoid monkey presses
the wrong button and rockets go off.
It’s independence day at the O.K. Corral.
A host of wired-up babies
are screaming at checkerboards.
There is the cellophane mother,
doing her surrogate chores,
and the men who dance with rays,
pale and dark-eyed, like ghosts
of the future, abandoned
to heartless plans. The glint
of the badge will not blind the eye
of justice. Or so goes the song
of sorrow which ricochets at want
about the globe.
(from "Dead Box")
There’s a crash outside the church
and bodies in the road,
a flood of blood, the sirens cry,
and god is just a goad.
To die in shadows of the cross
seems ethically untoward.
The master’s out of bandages,
he only owns a sword.
A priest is standing in the street.
He offers up a prayer.
But save the space, delete, erase.
It seems the dead don’t care.
All the townsfolk who pray
to the lion and lamb
have decided that justice
is rarely well done.
All the saints ate the sinners,
served up in a jam.
Now the sisters of mustard
all carry a gun.
And the banks have closed down.
And the schools are encampments,
as the flag of obscurity
furtively waves.
All the best who moved west found,
when put to the test,
that old history spends
all that religion saves.
Wicket eyes in cardinal sauce.
Rum furry flakes.
Slapdash panache.
Spicy species.
Involuntary continental mousse.
Anise abuse.
Dribbled backwards conks.
Lubricated moss.
Dendrites on buffalo snatches.
Percolated flack dabble.
Umpteen fruity quads.
Redondo quill flyers.
Potent eight.
Relinquished spartans.
Prehensile mouthwielders.
Instant pelican scones.
Platter pushpins.
Necromantic neuron burgers.
I pick up things
from off the street and sell ’em.
Whenever words
come to my head, I yell ’em.
They call me Hubcap Bub
because I’ve got a big collection.
Folks can stop on by my shack
and make their own selection.
I sell all but the shiny ones
for just a buck or two.
If you’re in need I also have
the odd glove, sock or shoe.
I make up songs and lullabies,
but don’t know how to write.
You bring your sleepless kid to me
and I’ll sing him goodnight.
With all the stuff accumulated
here within my brain,
I often think it quite unfair
that some call me insane.