101st Plasmatic Extravaganza

In the blink of America, in the belly of Saudi Arabia
on the spine of China and Pakistan and Sudan
a day of magnificent explosions get sold in cracker boxes
toys, and necklaces and underwear flap everywhere
Digital cookies wrapped in tasty chocolate blowups
kill fish and babies and grownups and goats and chickens.
They kill the sky. It’s a Fourth of July Thanksgiving
when everyone has their head up a turkey butt.

Johnny steps on a Baghdad bomb in Kipling’s Afghanistan
and the country makes Super Bowl dressing with bowed heads
green peas and marshmallows on sweet potato pie.
Guns echo in the plasma screen, the teams take the field.
The pretty girls wag their rumps, beer froths in Paradise
and all over everywhere, purple mountains majestically
watch the clicking, clacking, babbling, flickering game

Somewhere in Texas an Attwater Prairie Chicken looks for a mate.
Somewhere in Florida, a nine foot alligator chokes on a plastic turtle.
Somewhere the Ex President wears jeans and smirks.
Somewhere the Ex Vice President hides in his fat listening to
his private heart machine beat him alive.
Somewhere the President Elect peddles a movable feast.

A thousand elephants with crosses tacked to their sides
and butterfly wings clipped to their ears march out of the sky.
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and Haitians
stand in line for the next trolley, the next truck or boat
the next something and somewhere in Chiapas, a Zapatista
slices a strange Lacandon custom with a laptop.
America’s bugles hoot the alleys, the shopping malls
the empty schoolyards and the parking lots.

Movie stars wearing flashing teeth and short skirts wail
cross-eyed songs in the Forget You Night. Flags flap
in the bombed out brains of soldiers eating crow.
Babies screech, mothers scream and wives stand
at blank windows staring into emptiness.
A philanthropist mail-orders nine hundred dollar caskets from Costco
with “He Didn’t Get It," printed on the lid.

Priests Hail Mary on her way to Dubai for a facelift.
Jesus takes a good room overlooking the sea. Rabbis rally.
Mid East kings sell slick promises of BEST Buy
in a Black Box with whores in the backroom on Sunday.
A man marries his dog in India and Minnesota
opens five Bed and Breakfasts for single canines.

When all the announcements are made,
all the prayers whispered, all the turkey stuffed in all the craws
and all the butchers close their cash registers and Bibles
and all the tight canons and Constitutionals
and the all overheards are overheard
and all the pundits choke on the babble in their throats
and all the pretty girls jump all the pretty boys
and all the slot machines stop at strawberries and 7
and all the Easter Bunnies die in waiting and all the
monkeys hang from their cages waiting for somebody
somewhere to speak up about something besides Freedom
Democracy and Terror, the immortal screen flashes MORE!