pith…

The soap opera organ announces
what we can hardly bear to hear.
A metal-aproned matron
summons the skin ribbon
she left on the seat of a Galaxy 500,
circa 1969. Her tremolo
is a casual torture. We mistake
her voice for a choir of a thousand
muffled mothers and wobble dutifully in
to an Easter dinner of wood duck
and greens. There are no roses
around our scarred 3D hearts
or arranged in the centerpiece
that absorbs what words we can pick
from our teeth. We are weary, heavy
weary, of managed creation and sick
from songs that tempt us simply
to silence. We scrape cold beards
of frost with manicured nails,
screeching at the April windows.
Our fathers were fools to store
their small-grained harvests
in such broad-slatted barns.
We watch the mess heap up
with the snow and the hyphens.
Nobody clears the faux-oak table
but the talkative furniture
does our screaming for us
and a phatic nation learns to curse
in shrunken frontier tongues.

.

joesmith

.

© joesmith, from “The Way the Worlds Comes In,” an upcoming volume of collected poems.

Once one absorbs the irreality of everything, is there any other choice but to survive it, virtually?

“Time itself, lived time, no longer has time to take place.” – Jean Baudrillard

When people lose their sense of awe, they turn to religion. When they no longer trust themselves, they depend upon authority. – Tao Te Ching

Q: Name one convincing intellectual of the American Right.
A: We don’t need no stinkin’ thinkers.

In the End Times, the producers of propaganda will profit from the people’s demise. Put that in your Rapture bowl and smoke it, Righties.

In the past, American Populism hasn’t benefited the status quo. That’s 1 aspect of this current strain that makes it a proto-fascist wonder.

Ugly American Populism has come & gone through its young history, but it’s not led by the filthy rich (Beck, Limbaugh, newly rich Palin).

Glenn Beck brings all the crackers to the yard.

Pardon my absence of comedy. America distresses lately.

Must each American political season be more farcical & less rational than the last?

To “Restore America?” Expand our “news” inputs, make up our own minds & talk to one another again? Just a thought.

The only high-growth sector of American GDP in 2010? The cost of speech. http://bit.ly/b0apeY

The primary skill of Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, O’Reilly & sundry propagandists is their ability to turn lonely inchoate anger to group rage.

Mohammed, founder of Islam: charismatic militaristic ignoramus.

Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism: charismatic womanizing huckster.

Mormons and Muslims read the world’s most ridiculous holy books. Read them. See for yourself.

The Koran is not worthy of burning, flushing down the toilet, or wiping my fine atheist ass.

Mohammed was illiterate.

Book of Mormon: Jesus literally visited the Americas & God turned people’s skin black because they were wicked. A ridiculous religion.