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) . . .