Memes Away

decorations in the stream
microsoft attempts
to take control we rise
the river runs the banks
their feeble power-constructed animes
drowned in the night
the actuality of nature un-
predictable at base, reflecting
Her art and our lovemaking.
4saken, Dnatured. Djinnerous
Delirious your vision at my
edges the flesh made spirit
In the lyric hear the music
(you) sing the self electric
dreams made deciduous
the leaves of memory
falling in a lyric dance.

Folk Music

the redheaded kid
in his banjo'ed rhymes
met at the apocalypse
or maybe appomattox
one or the other
free willie the bumper sticker said
the kid ran the story where
the witch had left him. amazing promises
none kept, some distorted.
his courage was an intricate vessel
shaped by someone else's hands
on the spinning wheel of his
betrayal, left me and the sand
of the timelessness in the wordlessness
of boredom and bureacracy. all
stories inhibit;;;that's why
he juiced his last newton
flailing in the monster world
shoggoth's a motorcycle betrayal
down the beach up the establishment
some pretty disturbed numbers
being rung on the wheel of deception
hey gary how are you now?
just about dead in the water.
right? I found that Madeline
L’Engle book the other day,
with your inscription:
friends forever artists
in America. a snow angel
in my memory.

Sister

down at the bottom of the sorry sisters
is a bad story figuring on my initial appearance
who do you think kept track of these things?
certainly it wasn't you oh sister who is not
my sister shoe-buyer memory changer
she who criticizes my voice at the very end
of time the fake intellectual the soft player
of sorry games seeking right and left
to find the maximum social success in a
limited definition crossed by financial success
of an aluminum nature and keeping me
out of it all, not that it matters, in a year
or three my children's children will still
see me and she will be a family story, the antic
aunt no one ever saw, afraid of having her
pockets picked and incapable of even
the mildest logical structure. Her sister's
jokes at her expense and my own words
about her folly. The Huntress pays off
her own guilt debt: "She was the first;
Mother's madness was the song she learned."
whereas she, the republican in the mix,
knew Mother was mad, early on and so
avoided the crushing burden of her judgement.
And I adapt it all, the sorry sister's poor
understanding, her critique of the Lovin'
Spoonful: “so ugly” her first
husband (gay ex-priest) running the coffeehouse
“since you asked” her wedding song
her inability to be gracious/Jacques Brel
Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
wasn’t cheap enough for her. She let
me know. What I hated the most: that
she took Tommy B.’s painting from me
a wedding gift, not like I had a choice.
She told mother I shouldn’t read Freud
when I was thirteen, like she could
ever really understand what it was like
in me. But I had her diary from high school
full of prayers and boys she liked
who wouldn’t give her the time of day
so boxed in she was and still is. So
Republican girl is right about the sister
She became Mother’s legacy child
And I am so glad I am not her. A
great gift from the Lady,
and my own choice.