Broken Elegies/American Scream (re-mix)

Broken Elegies at dawn, at dusk, on plains

of rocks above the star-spangled consciousness

precious precocious flowing quagmire mixed

hateful diatribes canted- dis-re-membered

words of loss, of love and sex and sunder; where

are the hosts of black-eyed pent-up, doubled down,

pounced upon Pentecostal tongues of searing

springtime memory? And where are the toxic

anthems of our misspent misplaced misspelled youths

bent over prostrate to sun gods river gods

righteous left-handed pop-minstrels wondering

winding, wandering about with one foot nailed

to the cross, the other caught forever in

ill-fitted shoes of hand-me-down poets and

backwoods hayseed bards— the time is out of joint

pulled from socket and hanging by sinewy

threads of reason, gloating fat vermillion lips

of numberless counting castrates warbling to

the midday sun about all things marvelous

when the News day’s just begun. How now and back,

splurging onward in forlorn biographies

of saints and almost sinners—who sin and sin

again if only they had more conviction,

or whatever else it takes to howl and bay

--and underwhelm the tide of rote opinions;

a diabetic wastrel economy of quick-fix-it flapjack spitfire

sperm-and-jetty garnished genesis of Jehovah-Gerry-rigged

non-sense swilling can’t-anchor-us old men in pimped-out

prayer-shawled black-brimmed hats and spats cotillion

picking out banjo-tuned marching orders, pedigrees predilections,

derelictions maledictions –holy hosanna hoopla’s and after-re-birth

sweet placenta sugared-teas sipped and slipped with lime and lye

in awkward threadbare mourning coats of shaved-ice on the veranda

porches of the deep south during summer’s dog-day turnstiles;

bent strays, can’t stays, stay-free cantilevered vaulted ovens brick

and mortar pedal pusher doors at mad maxi-pad security asylums,

over pious hardword floors in monasteries fucked and then forsaken

by the Jesus freaks and spit-sink gurglers of Sodom and Gomorrah

who took one long-last fingering -look at poor old Lot’s wife

in exchange for nineteen whispered longings about the cast and

crude familiar shadows that burned down the forsaken hallway-walls

and pornographic subway stations, in epic neon near-miss-pisses

from the nuclear blast zoned-out graffiti on the Saigon Hilton

Hiroshima and the bygone Days-Inn Dresden era meltdowns of three

on a match, or Lucky Strikes, when the Cold War, Old War, New War,

Anything-but-true-blue War, was simply not enough

and then the Penta-gonal –real gone—Papal papers said

and the jumpinJesusMaryandJosephMcCarthy crowd said

’please please please give us one more—please give us just one more

big fat happy hippy whore WAR… and we’ll blow the whole damn wad,

damned world, the holly-jolly holy world up, the first up, fist-fucked

ramshackled world- to-kingdom-cum – amen-amen-amen; Amen!’

It never ever really ever is near and dear enough, you know? You know

There are no love-hate gods, no goodniks, no thumb-sucking Nimrods-

writing on the neoprene and cellophane palaces there in Babylon-Beijing-

New York-Havana-Moscow slicked down Chi-town, double-down town up-town;

no peaceniks, no beatniks, no syncopated hat tricks, no by-golly saint Nicks,

just streams full of screams full of dreams full of full-fledged, flat-out

Acheronic, Byronic, Iconic, Platonic, bucolic head-on-sucking-fucking flagship

Full of crap tin-can— can you O.J.? can you D. J. ? can you Cold Play? can you

Stand a replay? Oh say— can you Oh say ’I can see your half-assed-Armageddon

from my bully pulpit-backyard-tabernacle-of-the-fucked-up, two-faced, bullshit gods.