I shook out the sleep dust from your pillow. Seemed as if you'd dreamed in black and white. I was thinking more in terms of color. So I had to wake you every night. Surely there must somewhere be a flower, spot of sunlight or a slice of sky. Now I have to wake you every hour, dabbing at the grayish tears you cry.
Catholic boys in MAGA hats, bothersome as swarming gnats.
A Frank Blair (1915) hologram
bleakly announces the death of Sun Ra (’93).
So opens the new Howard Hawks (1896) film,
a bizarre new take on the murder of Joan of Arc in 1431,
starring Keir Dullea (1936) and Michael J. Pollard (1936)
as a conjoined-twins version of the heroine, voiced by Mel Blanc (1908),
whose last vision is of Jimi Hendrix at Berkeley (1970),
the great lefty axeman portrayed by Stepin Fetchit (1892)
in a marvel of editing. An uncredited walk on by Clint Walker (1927)
as Turk Lown (1924) relieves tension and leads to the final gasp
as Gayle Sayers (1943) and Lydell Mitchell (1949) arise from the pyre
as Joan’s conjoined souls and are transplanted into the bodies of
Mike Sadek (1946) and Mike LaCoss (1956) as life’s eternal battery.
Somewhere in the mix, Max Carey dies (’76).
He is played, with lifelike precision, by John Felske (1942).
Joan’s song vocals by Idina Menzel (1971).
“Hymn To Sun Ra” by Ceelo Green (1974).
The movie is dedicated to the memory of Claude Pepper (d. ’89).
Reasonable dialog, dead as a hot dog,
has been packed away with the rats.
Freedom of thinking, burnt out and stinking,
is now criticized as ersatz.
In the land of money, the currency is lies.
The golden rule’s the stuff of fools.
Forget the things you learned in schools,
The new frontier, it seems, is where truth dies.
There is no benefit for honesty.
It’s painted now as last resort of rubes.
Misinformation has a ministry,
while truth and trust slide quickly down the tubes.
Two waters wet and dry
burn and chill
illuminate mountains
extinguish stars
melt freeze pose timidly
on leaves sweat bullets
in peacetime shimmer
in war calling sand to task
impregnating rivers
screaming tears dilute
and overflow allowing
for gods of mud and ice.