BUCK SHOT FLAG

for Franz W.
& Tom W.



There's a room

Sitting at a table
In our free society
The accoutrements
Are all very nice
Polished mahogany
A fine table cloth
Clean silverware
Plenty of food
Piled in the center
A 55-inch plasma
Screen on the wall
For viewing pleasure

There's even a record
Player in the corner
With massive speakers
A nice vinyl collection
Sits amid books
Upon the shelves
Along side the loaded
Totemic gun resting
On its jewel case
Depression in velvet
There's also the medicine
Chest down the hall
In the tiled bathroom

Except for the nagging
Excedrin won't solve
Elliot's problems now
He's got a splitting head
Ache and the only cure
Believe him he's tried
Everything to no avail
Is to grab that crown
Gem and split the heads
Of those he thinks
Have persecuted him
So long it's making
Him sick with it

If the revolver was not
In the room frankly
So easily and sacredly
Necessarily by law
Abiding right there
Gleaming in the dark
Whispered by silenced
Bullets for tongues
An overheated and
Repeated insistence
Gradually and mutely
Transubstantiated into
Abject American prayer

Would the troubled
Elliotts of our land
Find it so God damn
Easy then to fatten
This growing meme
Of their manifesto
Signed sealed and
Delivered with fatal
Punctuation marks?
First ask what price
We traded tyranny
For and further the
More we pay for it

Freedom with our
Lives the pressing
Question remains
To count the cost
For those we lost
The double edged
Sword now replaced
By the barrel which
Fires both ways
May no sooner
Be repressed than
The flaming edges
Of our story itself




 

WITH MY SON (WHAT WE ARE)

We swimming in the Sun’s light
Are like the fins that bring delight
Of a creature looping in the night
Forsaking darkness with its presence

A star is an exiler of the dark
Take a look around and you will see
There is no darkness between you and me
In fact that is an impossibility

For what we are is pre-conceptual
If we shut our eyes then we will find
There's really no such thing as mind
So let us open our eyes and awaken

To being alive in a fantastic continuum
We could not possibly imagine otherwise
So nevermind understanding and go on living
This dream of existence with our senses

The lens of thinking can never correct
Now cease the turmoil of our thought
And bring the splendor of that which is
By banishing all that is not


~ for my son Zane
May 14, 2014