Thursday, May 3, 2012

Anthrax Avenue

photograph by lenore goodell

And tacky tacks
commingle your double
time in despair pair
off

you can hear me read this here . . . 



Sex creates fun
fun creates parties
parties create alcohol
alcohol creates dope
women create men
men create half a dozen killing enterprises
made in New Mexico
tragedy crosses the border
everything gets reversed
in the car of the future
the home of the triple car garage
the spoiled brat of the past produces
spores of unbreathable future
time travels backward and ends in
the Pope’s lap
the poet’s rap.
Anthrax Avenue ends
where the Batmobile dead-ends
and has the last laugh in Carlsbad
where the radioactive wastes burp & throw up
hungover from a national binge.
We dropped our guard now everybody
hates our backyard.
That’s what you get for sucking the sucker
                        of secrecy.
Trying forever to pull the wool over
            the sheep’s eyes.
We are the fat lambs led to slaughter
by a government that doesn’t know where it’s going
except to the decimation of the universe.
namely the best of all countries eliminating nature
a one species world, namely ours,
with robot greenhouses and cattle ranches
roaches and ants and aphids we try to murder.
Yes the problem is a preponderance of egos.
Human humans that are not too human.
We’ve made lots of progress the “we” tells me from
                     the pulpit
and yet it’s true: Mozart, Anna and the King of Siam
Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha love and compassion
yes, tolerance.
Tolerance and democracy.
Back to the Earth, my only home
as I return home.
Home again away from home.
That home of hate is not my home
but a fundamental cult
of backended young male assholes.
Breathe deeply. Garden
practice husbandry
follow the stars.
Act like you got sense.
Disorganize.
Follow your dream if that includes
the world of Jane Goodall
Woody Guthrie the great cathedrals
and the kivas
the natural order of recovery
day by day
from the drunken disaster of greed
building houses so big no chicken would live in them
light lightly.
Here with humility to shape me
if I let it.
Let it out
in the music of communicated life
to the jazz beat of the heart
the hearing of the soul
the giant helping of helping others
for dessert. 



larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 18Oct2001

this is from Oh Cabezon, poems from 2001, over 10 years old . . . remember anthrax being sent in letters to Tom Brokaw & Sen. Dashiell, but then that's only the time the poem is written in, and a month after 9/11 . . . the poem touches on New Mexico, the WIPP project, Los Alamos, drunkenness & greed, gardening, compassion . . . (heck that's about all I write about) . . .

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