Poetry

Just like my father     
you are broken: the eggs     
are melted, the scrambled ham     
is rotten, and the steak     
is mostly corn.     
      
John Wayne died on the farm     
seeing that everyone was     
hanged by the judge,     
his bravado drawing     
a clear line in the East River     
against the "injuns" in the sky.     
Now, his cowboy hat and Colt .45     
are trampled carictures     
on the playground.     
      
The purple fabric of your mountains     
regally outsourced to oriental     
shoddy workmanship chronically     
bleeds in the acid rain,     
eating at the decaying landscape of     
crumbling bridges, communities     
ravaged by renewal,and those     
neatly rowed suburbs.     
      
It competes for the love of Jesus     
concealed in weapons permits     
with the 2012 nativity/Santa-Rudolph The Reindeer     
Light Show Extraveganza     
for a spot on the list     
behind Senators and Bankers.     
      
God has given up     
on the souls who call for him     
the most, who plead     
to make things right     
but     
even he knows     
the message has been lost in translation.     
      
Fight! you great rabid eagle:      
your life source, your men and women     
abandon you in search of the American Dream     
that have fallen like grains of sand     
on your majestic beaches through     
loopholes twisted in supply-side slippery slopes,     
refusing to let go like an abusive preacher     
late on a mortgage payment,     
insiting that he will not unfasten his hands from the neck     
out of pure love for the wool of his flock.     
      
For     
we are numb                and                   cannot afford     
                                                 shiny obesity.