"I object to being killed in wartime" Jacques Vache
1. seven seals sun themselves at low tide
contentedly agitated
by the cry of one lone loon
2. Military Industrial Complex be damned
no phoenix rises from this Fire Dance
hovers maybe a paper bird
a thin black ash like Maui snow
that sweet gone cane wing
a small child's kite cut loose
and sucked up toward the sun
3. anything which is inhuman
I do not care for
Reno is dizzied with gambling
Reno is Nero sidewise fiddling with the tactics of men
no revolution in letting burn the compound fracture
of the everywhere cyclomyopian screen
through which all I's are mesmered
4. under the unsealed sun
boredom is one thing not necessary to suffer
yet the fool, my dancecard is filled
with patience, mercy, compassion---
the invisible chorus of all my other selves
5. come, panacea for a day or 2
if we keep up this way
inebriated by power
we'll be unable to detect
when the rapture comes--
hell, either it's a daily rapture
or it's nuthin', Baby.
6. Vache whispers through my laparoscopic wounds
"Nothing will kill a man for you
like being obliged to represent a country."
song ricochets from breast bone to pelvis
through new secret chambers
singing for the gone felosdese
7. fling that organized hairshirt into the night
pry your operculum open
doomed are those around the ones
who believe it is impractical to dream
GLOSSOLALIA 7: Copyright © 1996 J. Lehmus. All individual works Copyright © 1996 by their respective authors. All further rights to works belong to the authors and revert to the authors on publication.