right about now the executioner/is flexing his axe-wielding arms/because the cruel crowd thrust thumbs in condemnation/of the unlucky sap whose job title is Entertainer/and must now be entertaining with his amazing flying head
rite here, the bloodletting/the catharsis the appeasement/the conversion of unspeakable to a circus act
right you are and wright i am/brightness is as part of me as my middle name/a gift from my grandmother caroline/who succumbed to kidney failure four years before my birth
and here we are/in our wretched glory/and I with a this minute two-day stubble/feeling it’s time to slice that legion/wielding a tri-bladed bic
something bothers us/and a shave will help me/and 250 milliliters of clean clear cool water will help you/and here’s to our betterment
when i was young and uneasy/in arizona’s glendale elementary school district #40/the regimentation was constant
chorus teacher miss heath/a good-souled if misguided pouter pigeon of a lady/had us sing “this is my country”/and march in place while singing “you’re a grand old flag”
and of course we said the pledge of allegiance/first thing every school day
and our newspapers were the arizona republic/and its sibling the phoenix gazette
both published by eugene s pulliam, rabid anti-communist and anti-bureaucrat
we also read the more provincial glendale news-herald/which was indeed heraldic
and as a consequence/the rules were deeply ingrained in this schoolchild/in the land of barry goldwater
(fun fact: i have grown to admire Mr AuH2O)
and you don’t just shrug off such insistent, relentless regimentation
but you resist/you fight back/even many decades later/to dethrone the despotic beast within
you learn to make functional pottery/and you make yourself an Anarchy Cup
and you learn to prepare food for yourself/and you make your meals anarchic
go on the griddle to go off the grid
buy yourself a halfloaf/of batter than none sourdough/extra sour and lumpish
use its stevedore heel/to have mayoed tuna with dillpickle/for an open-faced breakfast microsandwich/and eating it
then you spread the same tuna on the next, larger slice/and sprinkle sunmaid raisins/on the tuna substrate/and eat that too, washing the bites down to gulletsville/with black sumatran coffee in your Anarchy Cup
and then let sanity prevail, drawing the line/at spreading blueberry yoghurt/on a third, mayoed-tuna slice
instead pouring a second cup of coffee
sweetening and blondiefying it/with half&half and blue agave sirup
and give thanks to Sweet Anarchy
and being kingless, queenless and rookless
and ready to burst from the early-day’s starting gate
One with Clay, Image and Text 