A Couple of Poems for the Night's Fading Light

Thanksgiving the Day After

Thank you for liberty as license
in excess to
make us fat and stupid


like turkeys portrayed
as what they are not
but they taste sweet
like the memory of
what we lost


God Bless us for being a nation of assholes
in every country where
they don't celebrate
what we have
lied ourselves into believing
was representative of our gratitude


where
irony is
the cranberry sauce
and the gravy lines the arteries
of our super highways
in the portable mashed potatoes
of wide load bodies
yearning to be free


where our children are pierced with
navel rings
and tongue studs
the one hidden in folds of flesh
and the other hardening Daddy's
fat cock
while mom cruises the aisles of the
open 24 hours Giant supermarket
in a Valium haze


searching


I been searching


I been searching every day


and generating vipers
like The Bible in hiphop
done by Snoop Dog and
dressed by Diddy
and available in Spanish
and Braille for those who
need to touch what they can't feel and


joined at the hip to
the country we fought to achieve
independence from
who never stopped running the show
and who joins us now
in another nation where
death is the technicolor
dream coat


and we like it better from behind
with a reach around than
we do on our backs and looking
into the face of the rapist
who made sure that the only people
walking on the sea of Gallilee are
Palestinians running too fast to sink


Yeah, I got your
gratitude swinging
I got your illuminated text
and the bloated bodies that
Rumi might have mentioned
if he had been Nostradamus instead


or Nosferatu
in the White House where
they don't get mentioned


We hold these truths to be


we hold these dark woods and
serial killer drop zones in the
ice plants along the sides
of California freeways to be
self-evident.


I wish I had a country to love
I wish I hadn't died in the loading zone
I wish I had not
shit in one hand and
wished in the other


I wish


I wish


I wish


we thank you lord for these blessings we
are about to conceive
indivisible
with no kind of fucking justice
in thrall
to the Homeland Security pigs
in the hall.


(there was another Thanksgiving
that wasn't on Thanksgiving where my
Mom made me hotdogs because the chili
the family was having for dinner on the
night I got back from the hospital
was too spicy for my 12 year old stomach ulcer


that I got because
someone was so angry and cruel
that I
burned my insides out


I lost it-


for awhile before
I even knew it was there

my health
my life
my heart broken inside


I cried


I wept


I died


My father called me a
special privileged character
he whipped me
like a dog


that's what I got for Thanksgiving


that's what I got


that's what I got
for Thanksgiving every day
and he was a soldier for life
in the army that protected
the land of
fat blessings
for which Thanksgiving is the
day before shopping is celebrated
and the day after the two day wait to shop)


Suffering
and succotash
cartoons and life
animated characters poping up out of the sidewalk and one of these days


one of these days


"ba ba bada ba bada 'bing' that's all folks."


cartoon spiral sucked back into the real spiral
"buddha budda budda" said the machinegun scream


"Down on your knees!"


"Good grief, it's Daddy!"


For these gifts we are about to receive
from a god that looks like John Wayne Gacy in a clown suit
on a bed of clouds with handcuffs


Thanksgiving
we thank you god for the rain of fire that
we richly deserve
more for the fundies and missionaries than
we do for the porn


What does it take to paint sugar water under the
eyes of starving black children for
photo-ops in a Banana Republic Safari Suit?


the same thing it takes to be in charge of
exploited children
the same kind of photo-op
of men congratulating themselves for
killing half a million people
so that
their buddies in supply and demand can
make enough weapons to defend the bottom line


I am thankful
on Thanksgiving that
I am not you
and grief sticken too that
you are a part of me
Here in the pumpkin pie wilderness of
the land of the free.

Patrick Willis narrates:

Thanksgiving The Day After

---

In Dreams of Appetite

fast asleep
coiled at the base of life
the love of self and its reflection-


the dreams of appetite...


twined one about the other
one and the same
endless longing for expression
there…
to be reabsorbed and born again


like Nicodemus
the mind asks stupid questions
because
the unknown
is just that


unknown...


and the reality of things always
more simple than we can understand
here
amidst the clamoring of-


the dreams of appetite


oh...for what a length of time...
with nothing to measure itself against
except itself
and emptiness
beneath
the grand empyrean arched
and bottomless
from which falls
the fiery rain


there in the cauldron of confused
and ever changing shape
came forth whatever was wrought
by fear and delight


fantastic beasts
and languorous Venusian witch
to dance
amidst the purity and squalor of-


the dreams of appetite


where is the solid ground?
swallowing sands swell the invisible winds
and serpentine funnels race
through the carnival ruins of
the wreckage left
from the battle for survival in-


dreams of appetite


how we mourn the passing of the patterns
in the kaleidoscopes twist
what special meaning has any one-
among all the rest?


when the colors go
only the backing screen remains
that…is the sum of it….
…across the face of which
parade the wizards and fools who
pursue the mist.


a temporary focus
and uneasy sleep
somewhere...


In dreams of appetite


nowhere to stop
to stop is to forget
beyond galaxies and
beyond that...


homeward past bright angels
whose work is to refine
all circumstance and substance...


guardians of the soul
at that fearsome banquet-
the featureless night
the black table upon which are served-


the dreams of appetite


bardot upon bardo
from Paris to Tibet


elusive spirals
the upward swing into illuminated rooms
where imagination serves us best
but cannot prepare us for
the splendorous rites
performed by those abstaining from-


The dreams of appetite...


far in the unremembered past
there is a music like coursing blood
a shine without shadow
a milk of self forgetting
a rising, rushing wind of living song


it is the provocation of all longing
the unknown source of every want
to be achieved in silence
under lustrous love-hewn stars
when-
silence has
prevailed upon the world
with all its might


whatever world there may have been-


in dreams of appetite...

Patrick Willis narrates:

In Dreams of Appetite