Saturday, December 16, 2006

ESSAY ON THE SERIAL NATURE OF PICNICS

Colossal man sits on a ridge in the
Catalinas watching
the car lights inching their way up
into the foothills, he smiles at this
illusion
of motion repeating
each night like history a constant
approach to
his idea
of home his hollow eyes look
at the town he built, in a café
down below a woman
asks a man, "WHO
are all these people?" The man laughs, he
doesn’t even know who he
is. Colossal Man laughs, the price of being
everybody is
you’re nobody, not
what anybody in particular
passionately wants but
what most people
can put up with , WHO
takes care of us in a wooden
parental way, and celebrates
unusual abilities growing
like giant warts in common,
fallible, and fatuous
individuals, sometimes kind, sometimes
blind he
blinks a lot, those who
speak thru
his mouth find their own words
come out estranged, ashen, those who
listen hear the thoughts of
an authority that
screws anybody without
money and power that
dares not believe in
art or science or
any reality not
politically expeditious not
ready to fly any and all flags I gave to
each at one time or another
like a hero
and an ant
and an idiot and he
took it like a corporation
and a politician
and a dope addict and
every year I sent him money the debt
was never defined and so never
satisfied the DISTANCES BETWEEN
PEOPLE dwarf the chasms between
the mountains he
puts them together, he
takes them apart, some
have seen god there, others
have just been broken he
has it all and yet is never
satisfied, constantly
maddened by those who
test the echoes thru
those canyons and irritated to
distraction by
the still small voice of individual conscience
and consciousness growing up
like grass thru
a crack in the pavement, when he thinks
of this he gets
pissed gets
on the radio issues a breaking
news bulletin
"THE AIR IS
CLEAN, THE FOOD IS
NOT POISONED, THE WAR IS
JUST, GO
HOME EVERYTHING IS
OK."
"FAMILY!" he says, "COMMUNITY!" he
says, "COUNTRY!" he
says and then
opens a door in the night and it
swallows us all.

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