Before I started writing in tercets...

At Talladega Superspeedway

Buzz Aldrin tells the good ol’ boys to
energize their ground crafts
and the good ol’ boys have no
goshdarn idear what to do.

When Armstrong uttered his giant words
back in 1969 we all believed and
choked back tears of pride,
but now we’ve ended up just like the South---

the good ol’ boys confuse the moon with moonshine
and we lose our way as a nation.
We don’t go forward
or we go around in circles.

Time is not warped, we are!
Armstrong’s footprints will not vanish from the moon---
unless we clean up our act.

But we’re gonna need a bigger Dust Buster.



written July 24, 1994