Hierophany

Damage by night,
Construction by day.
Boom and then depression.
Glass of this, puff of e(i)ther.
Sweat, flex, towel off.
Screw this, screw that, watch the calories.
Lunch today was a fruit bar.
Worry the afternoon,
Get ready for dinner, have a cold one.

You build something up, you build a beltway.
You find your muse and then you ask her to stop singing.

How could you do that?
You get a bunch of whiskey for Christmas,
Your friend finds you a little grass.
It's the BBC and Amy Goodman
And Tom Ashbrook "On Point" on podcast.

What can I read for information?
Democracy now, democracy now;
I need information.
I was expecting a 1% newsday and
Instead it's 54 — at which Bhutto is dead,
Suicide bombed, shot in the head.

Let's worry (instead) about our own democracy.
One heart, two hats
And a lot of confusion.
Anything could be my dreams.
My dreams as real as this.

This entry posted by J Rand : 12:12

All of the great
Songs about memory
And art
Have already been
Written.  I didn’t
Have the .
I forget, I didn’t
Have the power.
Picasso said it all about
War, Petrelli could fly.
And here I am feeling
So ordinary.
Let me not have to go
To work
And curse the goddam computer
And overdose on coffee cup cures.
Picasso married the dancer in 1918.
Petrelli saved the world.
I’m content taking love for granted
And writing about the Senate.
I know,
This is just another poem.

This entry posted by J Rand : 22:13

When DST kicked in
The door of November
Earth shook with time and temp.

The river covered itself with broken clothing.
The moon was but a stolen egg.

Those of us suing Energy
Foamed butane therms
At the incalculable mouth.

Rabid with due dates
We had the delinquent notion
To run our ceiling fans
Counter-clockwise in winter;

To share the hot air fair.
As if at a hot dog stand
Along Labrador Coast in summer.

Drunk on the boardwalk,
Running short on ketchup,
And seriously pissed off

About the weather back home.

This entry posted by J Rand : 22:00

I

Compare them & see.
The city of youth
Grows up alongside the ageless river,
Becomes apprentice of its flow.
The river is bustling
But always there,
Always also there.
You would think it does
But it has nowhere to go.
The city responds
With pigeons, people,
Seagulls on the backs of boats,
Sligo Enterprises, precocious Sligo Steel.
The smokestacks of necessary factories
Grow first, test the wind.


II

One day, the river knows,
The smokestacks will wobble;
They will wonder what they go to.
But that is later, when the river
Will barely make out the painted words
“Union Electric” fading finally
One bright-white day
Along the brick façade.


III

Before they were empty
Those empty blocks of stone
Churned out their products like a river,
And the barges barged,
And the river flew,
And together they answered the urgent needs
Of a warring nation.
Though the city’s now splayed quiet,
The river still flows,
No older,
But busy filtering phosphate,
Fat yet with catfish grumbling
At the crumbling lock & dam,
Lonely for those buildings once high with smoke,
Once prodding the river with metal chutes,
Once laughing gaily,
Once pumping like the master.

This entry posted by J Rand : 18:00