I thank the sky lord
for clean water to drink

Thanks

I thank Tom Clancy
for providing so much
damn PR for the military
industrial complex

Thanks

And a special thank you, too,
to the clown in his flight suit
skybombing us in his dreams

And a special fuck you to
the apocalypse for being
such a damn Good Book
and making it so hard
to get clean water
in Beiruit
and for the passing
of fluids through
his oh so cool
heliopadster suit

And thanks for a hole of hot sun
stretching toward the East,
causing a bubble that burns
little words into a diplomatic urn,
and thank the world
for what the devil would do

His imitation is your mastery
as the nations fold and unfold
and the baliwicks bawl
about the rule of law

And thank you money for your energy
passing over the world like a green cloud
being and for hell being all filled up,
by the counting of your digits

Thanks a lot for my sanctuary box
Thanks, thanks a lot
Gift thanks to this gift, this square
where I stand with my porridge
and my cash register or gun

Oh, so much thanks for this taste,
for melancholy and sleep
to keep me not so much
sane but at least in a state
of palatable paranoia

Thanks for allowing me
the rather obvious conceits
of always wanting more
and giving me a way
to step out of the circle, hey!

I saw a flower child with a ring in her nose
and a house as big as a cloud
hanging from a cliff like a prisoner in a noose,
a rustling from the trash bin, a sticking of my heals
into the carpet, and facing the wind with ear bent
I was forced to wear some kind of ridiculous
head contraption and now I can't hear you
and now I can't get to sleep anymore
and now I think Orwell is right, always right

August is in arms and the president is on vacation
and the world burns and the seas swell,
satire rings more true than ever before
and Ginsberg howls from the grave
and the world heard over my headset is corporeal
and now I hear voices and, fuck, everyone else can, too.

And they are the same voices from the same damn
electronic fireplace and country twang is the radio salute
and Operation Wannabe Warlords is just a rush
for the kiddies in the suburbs and those two characters
from American Gothic have left their pitchfork to rust
and their haybales come to use now in polystyrene bags
covered with American flags and the media,
allowing us a glimpse, think that's their best effort
for sticking it to the Man and those haybales won't
dry in the barn because it's just too fucking humid
and the seas are melting from ice into dust
and the country crooner is a caged old bird now.

For exactly one decade
I have made a habit
of smoke-toughened
into leather-lunged
bouts of caffiene-induced
delusions and other
observations
from the broadcast
centers of the monoculture,
usually staring out
at parking lots,
sometimes at mountains,
sometimes the sea

During these years
of nicotine reverie
I have sent myself
naked into the world
as a statement
opposing me,
seeking you:
A pretty
silly exercise

Especially since
now I have found you
Especially since now
I have acquired a need
for reticence,
a hermetic safety zone
from all of that
attention seeking
and performed
self pity
that is the act
of writing poetry
in a public place

This need for privacy
I believe is healthy
since the heat rising
from the cement is getting
more than just intolerable,
it's apocalyptic,
as are the stormy arms
of August

These days to dive
below the surface
into the womb of water
as lightning strikes overhead,
just a brief swim to exist,
below the waves,
as a teasing of fates
in case an electrical charge
were coming,
is everything:
I'm in happiness,
beyond its natural limit;
in hope, beyond its most
fearful flight