“Old cowboys don’t pass on.

They just spend the day

in the barn napping on the hay

with all their cowboy duds

still on.”

There was an old man from Tucson

who slept with his boots and spurs on.

His wife told him to go find some old mare

and with that gave him a real mean stare.

So, he then slept in the barn on the hay

with his boots and spurs still on.

There was an old man from Tucson

who slept with his six-shooter on.

It went off by accident one night

and gave his wife a mighty fright.

He then slept in the barn on the hay

with his six-shooter still on.

There was an old man from Tucson

who slept with his old chaps on.

He mounted his wife and rubbed her legs raw,

so he then slept in the barn on the straw

but, by God, he had his boots, spurs,

six-shooter and chaps still on.

The more metaphors

a poet stuffs into

a few lines is potato

sausage stretching the

gorged intestines of

a constipated bull just

before it bursts in the

hands of a Swede who

stuffs  the sausage into

a stew pot and slams

the cover with an

exclamation mark

heralding the

celebratory Christ-

mas season as the

boiling lutfisk

lifts the cover of

the pot on the next

burner revealing the

stinkiness of the

poet’s stuffed sausage

stanza not to mention

the literary allusion to

luscious lutfisk.

Dead albinos of Tanzania are

buried in cement poured over

wire to keep out those who

would raid the graves and chop

off limbs like rabbits’ feet to

be sold to the powerful. The

dead are safer than the living.

Witch doctors do the bidding

to frighten villagers with

superstitions and myths of

riches. There it’s blacks on

whites.  Here it’s whites on

blacks and the witch doctors

in both places do the bidding

for the powerful who are

scared of blacks and whites

and everything in between

including their own shadows.

And dead albinos there and

dead blacks here still cry for

justice and freedom from

cement graves imbedded

with wire so that albinos

there and blacks here will

live for justice and freedom

and Jesus in albino skin

there and black skin here

forgives and loves even

when they come for his

body parts.

“Nature lets us stay here,

and, one of these days, nature

is going to tell us to go,” his

wife said, “and then where will

we be?” she asked. After the

use and abuse in a very short

period of time, from an

anthropologist’s perspective,

perhaps

Mother Nature will

have had enough and we will

be out of (not in) the cold,

hot, cool, warm, wet, dry,

humid just somewhere

to nowhere place

and Mother will

start again from pro-

creation to protozoa

to a newly peopled

world without the people.

He didn’t think there

would be such a public

outcry against the anti-

gay, anti-Hispanic, anti-

black, anti-female att-

itudes and action, and

there really wasn’t,

except for something a 

little more than a

whisper on MSNBC,

but what an uproar

there was concerning

the anti-old white guy

stuff documented in a

fair and balanced way

on Fox News and dis-

cussed rigorously by

those doing water aerob-

ics in gated, 55 and older

Del Something-Or-Other

communities throughout

the South and Southwest,

most of the handful of billion-

aires floating around out there,

Congress and, without men-

tion, paranoid, old white

guys on Medicare and some

on Medicaid sitting around

simpering over white power

slipping through their arthritic

fingers forming puddles on

the carpet that the black,

nursing home custodian

would have to wipe after

the overworked, fatigued,

minimum wage, lesbian,

practical nurse notices

before she opens the win-

dow in the air-conditioned

room to let the stale air

out and notices the Hispanic

gardener clipping the

hedge on a day when it

is 95 in the shade.

The bitter, humid cold, like so many other

bullies, rudely rolled in and unceremoniously

shoved out the soft, seasonal warmth without any

consideration for the wishes, wants or desires

of javelinas, coyotes, let alone people or scorpions

or tarantulas or even the affable seasonal warmth

itself, which had discreetly cajoled the sadistic summer

heat to move aside for a season and, in this case,

decided that discretion was the better part of valor

by moving aside only to return another day much

to the satisfaction of all those mentioned above

and even the rattlesnakes who were preparing

for a long winter’s nap on the heels of the trans-

itional, soft, seasonal warmth.

Looking up while walking

his new,

ninety-five-pound, four-year-old

Chocolate Lab in the

desert, he saw

a plane flying low enough

under the clouds but

over Piestewa Peak into

Sky Harbor just

when he was thinking of using

a jet plane for a simile of the

blustery, windy, grey skies swooping 

down in the pre-winter

dust blow-up

over the desert.

And that’s just plain the way

it goes sometimes when verifiable reality

intrudes on imagistic poetry, just over

the rainbow, way

up high

with a really big 747 way

up in a dusty, desert sky,

a historical reality

he hadn’t

counted on for the authenticity

of his poetry.  And here, he

thought of it before

he saw it way up

high

in the sky.

Turns out T.S. was terminally tragic

in an obscure, strangely hopeful,

really difficult way to understand

from reading his pretty precise

poetry, but the proof is rock hard

in quarter notes, so thank heavens

for Cats, the musical, sometimes

in three-quarter time, so we could

whimsically see, hear, appreciate

the playful side of the laureate’s

darkness and, therefore, his

humanity.

Driving on the freeways of

Phoenix and Chicago and

the Interstates 10, 40, 70,

80 and 90, it’s not hard to

have a dystopian vision

of the late great U.S. of A.

In fact, it’s hard not to

conjure images of flooded

coastlands where billionaires

now swim 12^th St. between

Naples Bay and the Gulf,

residents of the Ninth Ward

do water aerobics all day long

in the streets, those who live in

San Antonio, Las Cruces, Bisbee

and Phoenix lounge in lush

jungles with anacondas where

rattlers used to slither,

Traverse Bay is a sand storm

desert between Petoskey and

the shores of Lake Michigan

and Sasquatch migrated to

Mexico just to make angels

in some snow not to mention

the recent news report on

scholarly studies showing that

no one trusts anyone anymore

about anything and how nothing

goes well with that kind of cynicism

as can be observed on the freeways

and interstates of the late, great

U.S of A.

Unless our present form of

capitalism (scavenger is apt) is

stopped in its tracks immediately,

within thirty years (that’s all.), it

is estimated that twelve, not eleven

and not thirteen, but a nice even

twelve people will own one trillion

dollars and, at the same time, 250

million counting from the bottom

up (and mostly the top end of the

the bottom) will own the same

amount. That means that

.000000048 of all Americans

will own most of the goodies.

Is that when the revolution

begins or will we have frozen

to death or drowned or died of

dehydration in the desert of

Alpena, MI by then?