personal anarchy

to my friends Anita and Eric Mahaffey

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

with intolerance for caste-based bigotry

and a fierce passion for fairness