“Greedy for Greenland,” the great leader uttered, Musing on military modes of grabbing. “Security’s shield,” he shouted out loud, White House words went forth boldly!
Europe’s earls then entered objections, Rallying round the riches of Danes. Pushing back promptly against plans of might, Frederiksen fierce, flashed her reply:
“If force is flaunted on frozen shores, Strikes from the States shatters our league; Broken the bond of bindings sworn, NATO is nuked—if neighbors clash!”
He lied about what was in store, To launch a swift, two-hour war. But our boss won’t explain, Now we’re in for more pain in a far away place, In a very messy state with a lengthy, complicated, intricate case of having much, much more on our plate than we ever should have ever, ever, ever asked for.
Those iron plates that churned the mud and gravel Impress me not. The rifled bore was, and is a crashing bore, I shut my eyes to the breechblock and Do not care for thermite. I recoil from venturi. I have only cutting remarks for the bayonet; C.B.W. stinks. Give me Gandhi & Walden, with a little pickle On the side, and I am content. Blood-red waiters make me yawn.
My country with the hair of inlaid fiber-optic cable With the thoughts of a backed up four-lane freeway at dusk With the waist of a redwood in the center of a scenic bypass My country with the lips of blinking Christmas lights With lips of teabags of silt from the Great Lakes With the teeth of a picket fence on a shifting, slumping shoreline With the tongue of a ticker tape parade on celluloid stock My country with the tongue of a televised courtroom With the tongue of a satellite that spies in dark silence With the tongue of a cracked bell that just rings and rings on command With the eyelashes of high-tension wires With brows of the edge of a sold-out stadium My country with the brow of a blue light under the sheets And of the steam rising from an executive sauna fifty stories high My country with shoulders of interstate concrete And of a hydroelectric dam holding back the stars My country with fingers of a ballot box—contested, sticky, messy Of a strewn deck of plastic cards My country with armpits of coal dust and scented bubble tea Of suburban sprawl and the nest of a bald eagle in a cell tower With arms of Mississippi tributaries and of a thousand assembly lines And of a mingling of the cornfield and ambushed migrant workers My country with legs of elusive wildfires With the movements of a swing state and a jazz festival My country with calves of sequoia bark My country with feet of broken treaties and numbered amendments With feet of subway tracks and tourists flicking coins into canyons My country with a neck of unharvested wheat My country with a throat of pulsing fiber and high-powered cooling fans Of a protest stage-shrieking in the bed of a dry river With breasts of the Appalachian night My country with breasts of a multi-story shopping mall Of a ghost town shadowed by the noonday sun My country with the belly of a thumb-scrolled digital map With a back of an abandoned silver screen My country with the back of a cruise ship climbing into the stratosphere With a nape of red clay and cooling asphalt And of the threads of a smudged napkin on a diner counter at 3:00 AM My country with hips of a barreling NextGen Acela With hips of a county rodeo and of Friday night tossed penalty flags Of a pendulum swinging between fairground stand food and Michelin starred dining My country with buttocks of Civil War reenactments Of a buttocks of uncirculated library books Of a buffalo nickel gifted to a grandchild My country with the loins of an offshore drill and of grocery store pharmacy Of prairie grass and vintage baseball cards My country with loins of theme park hydraulic launch coasters My country with ears full of rotating sirens Of ears of the Great Prairies and fast food in the car Of eyes of parabolic, steerable radio telescopes My country with eyes of a flatscreen TV left on at night With eyes of a forest gasping for breath…
The eyes of my country turned toward we, the people Hands held out for an answer, cuffed and arrested for expediency.
Askew in a vinyl cosmos life’s beading up on a cold tumbler And Juan Valdez has repossessed my mind for the glory of Brazil or Colombia Some squalid country at any rate Leaving my 33 grooves scarred by needles at 78 several rich hits off of Mrs. Olsen And Muzak sounds like steam jets and dark mutterings over eggs become berserk natterings of rabid chipmunks Gee Zus ! Only 12:00? Existence is deformed in a time-warp —Zumwalt [Night of 30 Sep-1 Oct 1981, Washington, DC]
On Christmas Eve, many just like me stopped at the station where I get my gas and bought slips of paper as thin as my patience waiting its reward.
A mile or so away in Cabot I closed my own store, shut down the register, reminded by the radio of the size of the jackpot while I drove home in my rusty 2003 Tacoma.
Maddie set out some sandwiches— our light Christmas Eve meal; two months of watching costs earned tomorrow’s fortune of presents paired with roasted prime rib.
That morning came, and our two children visited us in bed to tug at us— too small to pull us out and not old enough to realize they hadn’t.
A delight of flung wrapping paper and unchecked squeals energized our living room as, with some guilt, I looked at my phone to glimpse the weekly Powerball snub.
No ordinary loss: promised paradise, this time, came from the station where I staked my three bucks.
But this small defeat brought reassurance: in a world of algorithms, predictive apps, and AI advisers that steal away jobs and raise energy prices there was still one thing technology couldn’t do: choose the right numbers.
Release the files but just in part — Deception’s Pathway lies Too raw for Headline’s hungry Spark The whole would scandalize As Cards dealt from some hidden Deck With watching eyes confined The Truth must flame out gradually To hide the Guilt entwined —
They loaded files on Friday night, Though not the total lot; The press was vexed by partial truths But that is what we got.
On Saturday fifteen were gone — One noticed from before: A president in gilded frame — A photo in a drawer.
What this all means to common folk Escapes my simple mind When wealth can build a mighty wall That shields them from their crime —
And if a few are put in jail That does us little good For those that still control the wealth Will raise the price of food.
The message here is pretty clear And one that fits my rhyme That money spent judiciously Protects — even the damnedest — most despicable — devils of our time.
zumpoems 