What Today Is?

I spent the day
angry about a
number of routine
things. I fretted, too,
over issues
concerning the
fact that I'll be
moving soon, and
still don't know where,
exactly, except
that it is with
a great amount of
trepidation. These
are trying times.
For the most part,
I wasn't even aware of
what today really was.
At 9, once again, I was
counting down the
minutes until
my lunch hour,
one hour away,
and when I came back,
all the things I wanted
to accomplish while
contending with a few
necessary obstacles,
such as two out of
my remaining four
being taken
for someone else.
In all these thoughts,
none of anyone else's
concerns, their
problems.
Everyone is someone
else's problem. In
every tiny world,
there is another
tiny world next door,
sometimes peering in,
sometimes knocking,
and if you're really
lucky, making a grand
intrusion. Did I say
lucky? I meant
something else, I'm
sure. One can't
be too sure of
what they mean
when they say
something, think
something, do
something. It's
the somethings that
get us through the day,
when we don't know
what else will,
and can't imagine
what, or have
forgotten important things.
That's what, I think,
we're thinking more
of, or maybe should.

Tomorrow

Do you know what tomorrow is?
I don't think we really know
what it is.

Dead Letter

I think a dead letter
is a dream someone had
that went unfulfilled,
not because of the obvious,
that it never ended up
arriving, never ended
up read, but because
behind it was an
intention that, in the
dead letter, will never be
read.

This guy I know,
this guy named Bill Shakespeare,
everyone seems to doubt
he could have come up
with those plays
inside his own head.
They imagine romantic
creators, dignified and
knowledge-filled,
but a man who
worked his way up?
Who left his own
story untold? It would
be the greatest
tragic comedy of them all,
of its time too far ahead.

Dead letter,
dead letter,
I see nothing but
dead letters.
Outrageous attempts
to be known,
to be heard.
But since when
did we listen to any other voice
but our own? I myself
am horrified every time
someone tries to
convince me what
my own sounds like.

I protest! I speak
truths anyone could know,
everyone has said,
and for that, I am
called, inside those private voices,
a terror. I am one who
they will not listen to,
oh, yes, when I can hear them,
but never when I can't.
They will say it happens,
but more and more,
I find it difficult to believe.
These are the times
I struggle in,

in the land of the dead.

(What Are You Gonna Do With the) Country

Hopped into my pickup truck,
spun the radio to the talky talk show,
and the man on the air was saying,
in his soft and spooky voice,
what are you gonna do with the country?

Another man said, another woman said,
well all the things that can be done
have already been imagined for the country,
the borders drawn the laws put on,
and every state ratified to make their own hell.

Now we're gonna haggle over what
we're gonna screw up in the next four,
because that's what they're playing in the bingo halls,
the game of what can they do
that, for better or worse, can be done in this country.

They're all lining up,
and it's still a year away,
and they've been doing it
for longer than the last president
took the seat of the country.

Newtopia

All you need is
give peace a chance

All you need is
give peace a chance

All you need is
give peace a chance

How can I go forward
you can drive my car!

Green Pollo!

Are you hep to the jive, yo?
Do you strum the cat,
wik the ninjas?
We're not yellow pollo,
or white or black,
but green pollo.
Wederby this or that.

I refuse to believe that
pandas will die because
they're lazy.
If someone eventually
buys this poem,
it will not be worth
anymore than
it does right now,
which is whatever
it ends up meaning.
The Metaphysics of Value,
as they've been understood,
are misunderstood.
People are not
inherently lazy.
Yet there are people
who don't work because
they can't find work.
They can't find work because
our understanding of Value
is that nothing, not a single person
or thing,
is worth anything until
someone says it does. Everyone
wants to do something,
but they have to be told they can,
a thing bought if it can be afforded,
and not always because it's unwanted.
So many things go to waste.
That's not Value. That's Waste.
Green Pollo is all about Value,
about allowing ourselves to
see it, to understand it,
not as a static thing, a good or bad,
but as what it is, a Quality.
Green Pollo is the revolution,
is the fight, is the war they're fighting
against. Green Pollo is the
realization of Value
and the value of it.

Jive, yo, jive.

Radical Fanatical

I've frequently
a mind to restart
the business of revolution
all on my own. There're a
million things that need
changing, that could be
improved, and a great many
people who could stand
the same treatment, and
probably get that ball
rolling all by itself. I could
devote myself to a classroom,
and get everyone to
understand words again,
but I don't abide the presumption.
Good things happen because they're
meant to, not because someone
wishes they would. I think that's
been made clear enough, especially
since too many people have no
idea what good things are.

They fight for the right,
and end up left.