poem 281 of a poem a day for 2012

the caught in a pinch, painted wall army of Elvis, has been dead for 35 years now

in gourd palace ante-chambers

with slung mosses

beneath the tapestries

fitted bricks and the wind

sometimes there is a call

to a Rumpelstiltskin

dream-state opulence

that can be had

by using straw spun gold

I dig with clawed hands

in backyards

past midnight

for more Autumn

to arrest in cricket sounds

my strung out gravity is

its own late night talk show

with pink cadillac intro-music

to the little political monologues

the holy rolling of the titillation begins

the moment the polls open

continues until 3am

when the info-mercials begin

ronco dial-a-matics

and the rico statutes that

take everything of mine

not nailed down

before another night

is corrupted

with Dawn again

I need more

subsidized coffee

to keep crazy

running into the woods

onto plains for white stags

and buffalo in the once great

American landscape of dee-jays

spinning hot wax and hope

in non-refundable shipping fees

we were once paycheck to paycheck

with attached deductibles

for subscriptions to later reward

it was the end of the second great war

and we attacked the weekends

because retirement and Heaven

were our goals

Jacob Marley is in chains

in the white noise

that I am now stirring myself in

on the back sofa with the TV left on

here

in the crooked vespers

of my quiet racing mind

factuality is winged

is a lament in

histrionics bent

to where there is

no middle class left

to ease the squeeze of pennies I see

marching back to the copper mines

there

remains another

Dunkirk needed

to get back to that

promised land of pensions

and hands

that take the knives

out of the backs of ingenuity

to carve out more homesteads

in the digital world

to fill them with something

so marketable as each

of our personal joys

they all can be yours

for the low easy payments

of first born children and

minus that kind of credit

they’ll take blood in plastic packets

with your cells due on delivery

pulling the white van up

to your house and ringing

like those whirling whistles

in the deep plains

only these sirens

sound like they were meant

to pull you out

of your castle

because in America

only the dollar

can be King

EJR ©