Elegy For Jim Cody

Jim died in a wreck
ejected from
his pick-up truck

at an intersection.
He hung on
for a few days,

his poetry
piling up
in his mind,

the poetry
pacing back and forth
with no where to go.

The poems
became entangled
with each other,

lines from one poem
lost in
another poem,

stanzas became titles,
periods stopped us
in our tracks.

I could see the poetry
way off
on the horizon.

I saw Jim
push
the words aside.

Is Time A Wave Or A Particle?

It’s a beautiful
Hawaiian morning,
the ocean

is blue like
a crayon.
Suddenly,

the bombs
start falling
like huge hail

out of the Texas skies.
The blackness
of tornadoes

spreads throughout
the harbor.
The fires

look like lightning.
The funnels
of water

rise to the clouds,
and even now, two planes
head towards New York City.

I Look At The Pictures

I look at the pictures
of the devastation,
so many children dead.

I see a picture
of a man
caressing his dead son,

maybe three
or four years old---
my eyes fill with tears.

One can not help
but think
of one’s own chldren,

grandsons, granddaughters,
innocent children,
each and every one.

Words mean nothing,
the hell with poetry.
Only this

means anything right now:
Tears fill the heart
and the heart

pumps those tears
throughtout
the body.

Tsunami

The underwater earthquake
off the coast
of Sumatra

makes the whole earth vibrate
and affects
the earth’s rotation.

The tsunami spreads out
over the Indian Ocean
just missing

Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka
before heading
to India.

This, unfortunately
for Fox News,
is not the work

of Osama Bin Laden
though a new Al Qaeda tape
claims so.

But, the laws of nature
do not take man into account,
and have no idea of his importance.

Of Mice And Men

The best laid plans
of mice and men
end up

in Henry’s hands,
but, of course,
Mr. Bones

grabs them
and runs off
towards

the event horizon
screaming his head off
about something,

"There’s no organization
to any of this at all,
and where

does the tail
fit in all of this?"
Henry counts

his fingers
to make sure
they’re all there.

While Henry counts,
Mr. Bones gives him
the middle finger

and the plans that
could have saved the world
are chewed up by the mice.

Merry Christmas From America

Mr. Bones dresses up
like Santa,
he wraps up presents

in the garage.
He wraps up Palestine,
he wraps up Israel,

he wraps up Iraq,
he wraps up
all the troubled spots on

on the planet.
He gets in his sleigh
and delivers them

to all the poor kids
on earth.
"What the hell

are you doing!" screams Henry.
"I’m pretending to be
the United States of America,

ho, ho, ho,
and a very Merry Christmas
from America!" snickers Mr. Bones.

Dragster

Mr. Bones goes
to Crawford
to check out

the town
where Dubya lives.
He encountered

Dubya at
the local
barbecue joint.

Dubya was
wearing a dog leash,
put there

by Cheney, no doubt,
So, Mr. Bones
thought it

would be funny
to leash Dubya
to his rear bumper

and drag him
all the way
to Papalote.

By the time
he reached the
Papalote city limits

there was nothing
left of Dubya
but the leash.

Cardboard Whitehouse

This homelessness
seems to have affected
Mr. Bones

in a negative way
to the astonishment
of Republicans.

Henry though
has developed
megalomania

and calls himself
Henry Dubya,
he tries

to act presidential,
going so far
as to make a

cardboard Whitehouse
and crawling inside,
telling

his homeless army
to invade
the cardboard Iraq

he’s constructed
on the site
of the World Trade Center.

Cold Spell

Mr. Bones is
enjoying his
first cold spell

in Texas.
Everybody is wearing
a coat,

and Mr. Bones
is wearing
his

"Don’t Mess
With Texas"
T-shirt.

" You wimp!"
he tells
anyone he meets.

Henry nods
his head
in agreement,

but Henry
puts on a sweater
anyway.

Henry observes,
"Only one thing
is colder

than Minnesota winters,
and that would be
Dubya’s heart!"

"Yeah," says Mr. Bones,
"you gotta use an ice pick
to have a heart to heart talk with him!"

Texas Hunters

It’s been raining
straight for
the last three weeks.

Mr. Bones
is water-logged
and this thoughts

are soaked.
He looks like
Sponge Bob,

but more
radical, of course.
He wears

a beret
like Che Guevara.
He says,

"Texas is very
much like Bolivia,
right wing

and totalitarian.
They even hunt
earthworms down here!"

Wolf In Woolen Underwear

You know those
Israelis
are a very

talented wolf
tearing down
Palestinian refugee camps,

they’ll huff
and they’ll puff
and

they’ll tear
your house down,
your house made of

straw,
your house made
of sticks,

your house
made of bricks,
they

tell Palestinian children
play with this rubble
we bestow upon you.

Doggone

Barney
gets left behind
in Crawford

and goes on
an incredible journey,
"No, he don’t

find his way
to the White House,"
spits Mr. Bones,

"he goes out
to Hollywood
looking for Lassie,

and Benji
and Rin Tin Tin
and Mr. Ed."

"Mr. Ed ain’t
a dog!"
cried Henry.

"I know,
your stick in the mud,
I was just horsing around!" bortled Mr. Bones.

Mohammed Atta Hijacks Rudolph

Mr. Bones is decorating
the Christmas tree
with pictures

of the war,
pictures of the dead,
Fallujah, Baghdad, Basra,

Tikrit, Mosul, Babylonia,
Texas, California, New York,
every state of the Union.

On top
of the tree,
he’s not putting a star,

or an angel,
or a Santa Claus,
no, sir, he’s putting

Rudolph up there,
with his nose displaying a red alert
as he slams into the White House

delivering Dubya’s present---
two army uniforms
for his daughters!

The Butterfly

Chaos theory goes
like this:
if a butterfly

flaps its wings
in the Himalayas
then its

effects will
be felt
in San Francisco.

Yeah, maybe,
but only
by another butterfly

which will
think to itself,
"What the hell

is that stupid
butterfly doing
in the Himalayas?"

Suddenly,
Mt. Everest moved
a thousandth

of an inch
closer to
the Dali Lama.

But, maybe it was not
the butterfly
flapping its wings,

maybe it
was just
the butterfly pooping.

Southern Man

Mr. Bones tells
this story:
" I was

cutting a rug
down at a place
called The Little Brown Jug

with a girl named
Linda Lou England
when she

forced me to
get naked
and perform

cunning linguistic acts
which turned out
to be

anti-war poetry."
Henry told Mr. Bones,
"Bones, you jerk off,

that sounds a lot
like a Lynyrd Skynyrd song."
Mr. Bones got angry

and told Henry
in no uncertain terms,
"Ronnie stole the frigging lyrics from me, bitch!"

Henry realized, all too late,
that the Age of Reason
had bypassed Mr.Bones a la mode.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation By Dubya M. Bush

No weapons of mass destruction
found, Haliburton charging
Army one-hundred

and twenty dollars
per case of soda water,
Lynnde England watches

as an Iraqi prisoner is
forced to masturbate,
Dubya’s daughters

party in an Austin club
as war rages on
and Dubya vacations in Crawford,

Dubya vacations
in Camp David,
Dubya vacations

in the White House,
Dubya vacations
in Crawford,

Dubya vacations,
Dubya
vacations,

2 American soldiers
killed by
roadside bomb,

five American soldiers
killed by
rpgs,

a thousand
American soldiers
dead,

Dubya declared
major combat over
a year ago…

Seppuku

After the barbarians
came through,
there was

no difference
between the open desert
and the town of Fallujah.

They were Huns,
they were Normans,
they were Saracens,

they were Vikings,
they were Nazis---
they were Americans.

The crumbled buildings
don’t really matter,
but the crumbled lives

reach down
to the very root,
(not of Iraqi culture),

but the
very root
of America,

the root is rotting
and cannot support
the weight above.

Get Off Of My Chicano Cloud

The Death Star
shoots its laser
and Alderaan is gone,

chunks of Aztlan
float in space.
Gringo asteroids

head towards
the spinning sun.
Chicanos take refuge

on Tatooine.
They’re used to
scraping a living

to get by.
The Crazy Gypsy,
Omar Salinas,

rambles on
about golden robots,
there’s a smell of tiny robots

that look
like trash cans.
Get a grip, Omar, get a grip.

But, Omar’s moonwalking
backwards
on the desert,

little clouds
of dust rise
from his shoes

and in those clouds
a thousand ancient
civilizations thrive.

Luke Skywalker

Stuck in this
desert country,
where

my buddies die
beside me daily,
torn apart

by roadside bombs.
Grenades climb
into the frontseat

with you.
The desert becomes
your uniform,

you see a world
in grain of
dirty sand,

and the grain of sand
looms larger
and larger

until it obscures
the sky
like a sand storm

on Tatooine.
The Death Star circles earth
manned by Emperor Dubya.

Fallujah In Pictures

This man was a
freedom fighter,
this man

was a freedom fighter.
These men
were freedom fighters.

This boy was
a freedom fighter.
These piles of men

were freedom fighters.
These dead men
piled on the curb

were freedom fighters.
They’re all dressed
in civilian clothes,

civilian clothes
covered in blood---these men
and boys were freedom fighters.

They are free now,
and their country
is free of them.

And we, too,
we used to be
freedom fighters…long ago…

I’ve Got Your Freedom Fries Right Here!
(Mr. Bones Grabbed His Crotch)

We have
a new
neighbor

in our
neighborhood.
"No, dumbass,

not the
dead Mr. Rodgers!"
shouts Bones.

He’s a
French guy.
Him and

Mr. Bones
are becoming buddies.
Mr. Bones

calls him
Monsieur Le Manure.
Le Manure

is against the
war in Iraq.
He thinks

that France
ought to give America
a new statue---

a statue
of Adolph
Hitler.

On the base
of the
statue

a plaque will read’
"Give us your
poor countries,

we will invade them
and turn them
to rubble,

we will take
your men, women and children
and kill them."

Le gran
estatue,
Monsieur.

Or le estatue
De Gaulle
bladduer.

La Tour
Eiffel
up Dubya’s derrière.

Good one,
Le
Manure!

Leftover Turkey Vacation

We pull
into a mall
in Palm Springs,

Mr. Bones
is impressed
with the women.

Fifty-year-old women
with the bodies
of young girls.

Mr. Bones
is no chickmagnet,
but he tried.

He had
no luck at all,
so we

took the tramway.
From the top
of the mountain

the grid
of Palm Springs
looked like the Nazca lines.

Just then
an ancient spaceship
buzzed our heads

and told us
we live
in a dictatorship.

The pen ran
out of Inca
as Neruda fell out

and ran off
to the edge of the paper
from Punta Arenas out to sea.

Chale

We stop at
the dinosaur gift shop
in Cabezon,

we climb
the stairs
and go inside

the two-story
dinosaur store.
Mr. Bones

and Henry
buy T-shirts.
My dad

asked me if
I wanted to go
on a helicopter ride---

they’ve got tours
that are part
of the gift shop.

I tell him,
"No, dad, remember
last time

I went for a
helicopter ride
on the Big Island."

"Yes, I’d forgotten
about that." said dad.
For you

who don’t know
what happened.
Well, the Blue Sky

chopper that
took me
for a ride crashed.

The pilot
broke his back.
I walked away,

well, I ran away
is more like it.
Mr. Bones

looked at us
and said,
"I hate broke bones."

We continued
on the road
to Tamazunchale,

listening
to arias
on the radio,

the do
ron
ron.

Visiting My Father Over The Thanksgiving Weekend

We took Bones
and Henry with us
on Thanksgiving

vacation to LA,
to visit my father.
Mr. Bones heard

a local news report
about a gang shooting.
So, Mr. Bones

did a quick
research in
his own mind.

"You know,
these Crips, and Bloods
and Eses,

they’re as dumb as the
La Brea tar-pits,
fighting

over turf
that belongs
to the white man!"

My father laughed.
Miles later, dad pointed out
the dinosaur gift shop

in Cabezon
as we sped along
in his Studebaker---

a dinosaur
in its
own right.