[stomps shovel in sweltering sun,
schick! schick!
stops digging to rabidly tweet.
wipes browsweat on dusty suit beneath
cigarpuff clouds.]
lessons from the fossil record teach that
humanity will one day be locked in
bedrock, all the meaningless junk of
life trapped in substratum:
layers upon layers of lawsuits,
the hoodoo of an exhumed nation on
the autopsy gurney with skullwounds,
the TV granary of force-fed ignorance
cleft between hills of ideals
[thunk! thunk!
strikes solid object.
face festers into mania while
hunching ass-up on all fours to
scurry in the dirt.
lips discharge pustules of feverish joy.]
we only have eyes for striations on
pyrite crystals, embraces only for larceny of
a jaundiced rock hocked in this cirrhosis of days
bogeymen beat a bronze gong for
the hollow god of Gog and Magog, the
groggy populace rolls briefly over to
relieve bedsores and
snort another line of lies
“corporations are people too” and
shall claim deed to destiny on
the backs of deceased tribes while
modern man’s dolorem ipsum manifesto
fills graves with blank parchment promises
[dog-ears Chapter 11 from
Trump U coursebook.
pfft! pfft!
penispumps Wall Street with land deeds.
trouserbulge arouses a spurt of
stocks and bondage. removes ruler from
suitpocket to measure nation-girth.]
what saith the pink sandstone lips speaking
verses of toppled rock?
the Anasazi prophecy in
petroglyph prosody is pocked by
bulletholes and a future fracked for petrol heroin to
smack the freeway vein of society
what are these runes tattooed upon
the warm bosom of Utah?
do the ancestor spirits still feel pain?
do these stones cry for Navajo or backhoes?
who can reconcile us to
the buttes of our once lofty dreams?
how can one man be so far offswing on
the golf links of rational thought as to
morally bankrupt a nation with
vile shanks off the hosel of virtue while
crossdressing Christian?
life knows no mulligans
so stop duffing the ball!
still we follow,
still we follow,
steal we follow,
still we fall! oh!
[falls to ground in seizure. vomits and shakes.
awakes violently from peyote-dream of
borderwalls, proud of the next
mescaline-inspired vision of division.]
dearly departed, i’m sorry,
truth has become a shouting match and
you are wrapped too tightly in
death’s cellophane silence
your headdress plumes were courage and
valor, you discerned a time for talons and
a time for pipes, but my naked frustrations
shiver without a wing to preen!
if only i could give back your
tongues, put flesh to bone and
paint your proud faces for war —
if we could again learn to
beat drums instead of
profit’s shriveled cocks, i could be lead to
standoff upon this rock of ages.
if only i had as much backbone as
buried beneath my feet!
dumdun
as i meditate upon these sacred cliffs, dumdun
i hear a growing groan from dumdun
the earth pulsing like a heartbeat, dumdun
i hear drums and chants. dumdun
dumdun
oh Great Father tell us,
should a legacy be retreat at gunpoint,
much less a whiteman’s ballpoint pen?
dumdun
J. L. Pugh lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently pursuing an MFA with an emphasis in poetry while also working on his second book “Cartography of Flesh” for release in 2018.
Photograph by Bureau of Land Management.
