post tsunami

witnessed
events over the rainbow
shameful deceits
gambles of the heart
practical dysfunction
the search for orgasm
in this lifeboat

leonard at the turn
of the millenium, big hand
on the tiller, sad song
repeated. Who's
valuable memory
echoed in the pedal steel
strings of her lost song?

cannibal religion
at the door zoroaster
not in this evening
you keep your lists
i'll keep mine
jambalaya on the lake
mists in a treason
shadowing the old
friend never clear
as to the final
disposition

the day breaks
your face in the strewn
detritus post tsunami
on the beach
where I sit
paper in hand

This poem exists primarily as a kluge, a software developer's term meaning a klunky way of accomplishing something the language doesn't allow a more straightforward method of doing. Written after pursuing zoroaster across the web and discovering another truly ludicrous religion that people still believe in, much like Mormonism. How do people convince themselves of stuff that is clearly fantasy? The Book of Mormon is patently a clever workup of other stuff with this man's personal exegesis on why them new testament figures never dealt with all the souls living on the the continents across the water. And Zoroaster was just trying to offer explanations for things that happened to people. Unlike science, though, in religion when these explanations are shown to not work they are still retained as "gospel." That's where we get Creationism. "leonard" here is Leonard Cohen. The tiller image is meant to invoke the fisherman, and also, "Captain, Oh My Captain," Whitman's evocation of Dead Lincoln. Just because I lived in Springfield for several hundred years doesn't mean that I don't love the sixteenth president pretty much more than any of the others. You should read Lincoln's speeches if you want to be truly ashamed of the loser we have in the white house now. When did it become a good thing for our presidents to be anti-intellectual louts?