Poem #16--Follow the Burning Rainbow

Follow the burning rainbow to a pot of plastic pennies
you seek the milk of human kindness
but there is not any;
fair Helen, chained, is made to plow
proud Pegasus, a gelding now
Apollo's chariot is black
Orion has a broken back.

Yet youthful folly will insist
it still sees legends in the mist
where fairy tales are very real
and happy endings still exist.

Follow the severed skyline to a place where eagles die
the very brook and wood corrupt,
the sun, a cataracted eye;
the winds of change have lost their stride
the moon no longer rules the tide
the oceans fester like a sore
infected to the planet's core.

And hope is but an inmate
in a prison none can ever breach
and loyalties are sandy spires
of castles built upon a beach.

Follow the heavy hail of stones to a kingdom made of glass
the human river floods its banks
and hatred grows like grass;
the bureaucratic beasts are bred
their fiber optic veins run red
all they know is rich or poor
and all they ever want is more.

And comfort is a coffin lid
the shuts the noise out when you've died
when paradise has been revoked
the graveyard's where you'll go to hide.

Follow the spyglass vector to the depths of outer space
in search of something new to kill
to thrill the human race
which, by its own hand, bears a curse
the touch of Midas in reverse;
we glorify ourselves as lords
then slip and fall upon our swords.

And the rainbow is a conflagration
trailing smoke and crashing down
and no one even watched it fall
or mourned it when it hit the ground.

Kenneth "Frito" Lay is Dead (and other boo-hoos)

Well, Kenneth Lay is now dead. Boo-fucking-hoo. Bye, Kenny. Thanks for sinking the big, pink torpedo into so many people's hopes and dreams before you struck out on the Worm Road. Bollocks to ya, pal.

K.L. joins the vaunted Fortner's Boo-hoo-hooing List, a list for those I don't and won't miss. Also on the list: Benito "Finito" Mussolini; Joe-Joe "Don't call me Jenny" McCarthy; the Columbine nerds that wore the corny-ass trenchcoats (their biggest mistake? They should have started with themselves first); all of the Orcs from Lord of the Rings; Kyle Sandlin and Joe Gibson, former next-door-neighbors of mine at Marshall U. (they're probably not dead yet, but I just can't wait to put them on the list--they're THAT nice); Adolph, naturally; and Michael Moore (again, he's not dead yet, but when he is, you can be assured that Big Business is to blame!!!).

On the You're-Cool-So-You-Can-Live List: My cat, Pippen; my imaginary friend, Doren Pillock III; all of the Bailey family (all 9,000 members); and the red-haired girl at the Sophia Food Lion grocery store (nice pants, babe).

That is all.