T.B.O.D.
Two
create both.
And yes,
it’s terrible
Inside, outside, where is the
outside?
There is no outside.
What I see and where I live
is as much me as my bones.
I go out to look at the empty skies
but discover they’re an invasion
route.
What have I called?
A 7 mile high flash silver cumulus
comes walking on threads of rain.
The pointing finger of a church spire
says, go where I’m pointing.
Disobedient, I enter the underworld.
It’s older here.
Drainage tunnels beneath the concrete
utopia
are a whisper that seems to go on forever.
THE BONES
OF DALLAS
I am become limestone.
I am become geology.
Stepping out into the suburban whiteness
I hold in my hands
these continually passing cars,
these lawn sprinklers,
these flower beds,
these bags of fertilizer,
these flushing toilets,
these lawn mowers.
Down in the creek
fossils have washed loose
and assembled themselves
to climb out and roam the sidewalks
disguised as insurance salesmen
Madam may I speak to the breadwinner?
…madam?
Have you ever thought what might happen
if you were to push your hand
into the dirt of your back yard
and
touch the coolness of legacy?
If you were to feel it?
You’ve known that dirt
when you were digging to plant flowers.
You knew it
but you didn’t fully know it.
Here’s something that could surprise you.
The leviathan of the land lies below.
He is rock. He cannot be understood.
His cold sub-eternal shadow
steadies the assassin’s sighted gun
barrel,
so curious to know its prey.
Madam…
Have you ever walked
through submerged cities when you slept,
and heard above you
a pounding on the door?
There are dinosaurs under this town.
Down in the creek
children put their feet
into dinosaur footprints
and pick up pieces of fossilized bone,
to duel like crazed reptiles.
The cut away shelf of black clay
is a history of Texas murder.
Long winds thunder in their ears.
The empty Dallas God
speaks without ceasing.
Here we grow,
as the suburbs kill us with mildness
Turn homeward to the canned corn cackle
of TV laughter. TV go spawk spawk spawkie…
(Blam!)…
cartoon head gets blown off.
“Ya durned varmint!”
The head pops back up
and chitters at the fat little hunter,
but he’s done.
He throws his gun on the ground
and joins a pacifist cell.
Later
in a comic strip,
a Communist rabbit is discovered and
turned in.
Comic.
Kazi.
Commie-crazy.
Saturday I’m laying on the bed
looking up at a plastic jet fighter
that hangs on a string.
The pilot, a spider, bails.
I wave a comic book, killing it with
humour,
then
jump up and hit the road.
A motorist stops and asks
if I need to be turned in at a crazy
house.
“Uhhhhh, well maybe.”
The motorist speeds off, woo! Lucky escape!
After a while I stagger along
toward a mirror-topped lake
that keeps jumping ahead
like propaganda promises.
A pickup pulls over. I get in,
and the white haired minister
pushes that bible right on over:
big old grin: “That’s the answer, son!”
Ballpoint thoughts I’ll draw you:
suburbs at noon. Dogs gargle
near piercing green mimosas.
Lawn sprinklers hiss in the womb of
whiteness.
Kids with sun-bleached hair and brown
faces
watch from inside a refrigerator box,
little blond-haired bugs in the shadows,
playing house,
holding shadowy teacups.
A newspaper rolls limply across the
sidewalk.
It has a picture of Jack Ruby.
Downtown at the jailhouse they’re bringing
Oswald out.
The detectives wear light coloured
suits.
A pointing finger, the back of a head
wearing a Stetson.
A fierce frown: “Who shot that gun off?”
If you’re not careful
you could blow the top off a big secret!
In the deep afternoon I find myself
in back of a suburban Catholic church,
where yellow grass sews across cracks in
the black clay.
Nearby there’s a corrugated iron fence.
I can smell the dirt.
A face is brown in front of the rusted
metal.
The trusted metal
(I find myself) (strangely) (at rest)
In the parking lot an updraft
sends tatters of birds high into the air.
Tender sprouts have been deformed
beneath the constantly planted feet
of a well meaning old man
CRASH!......... CRASH!..........
Colossal feet smash into the land
getting closer,
bigger than anyone could have thought
sooner than anyone could have expected
It’s here!
He’s here!
I’m here!
There is no past!
I am the past!
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