Always like to trot this thing out at vote time...
LET us vote then, you and I,
When the evening news is spreading lies
to the patients etherized upon a fable;
Let us go, through a certain half-deserted mind,
The muttering unkind
A mindless knight in one-night crack-ho tails
And cornpone restaurants with taco-shells:
Sheep that follow like a tedious dittohead
Of insidious portent
To feed you all a dose of healthy koolaid...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and drink this sh*t...
From the boom we men come aglow
Walking from Los Alamo.
The yellow blog that wipes its back upon our window pains,
The yellow news that rubs our nose in blue dress stains,
Licked its lips upon the money of the evening news,
Lingered upon the fools that stand to gain,
Let fall upon his face the pretzel that falls from skies,
Slipped by the congress, made of sullen lies,
And seeing that it was a soft September morn,
Turned around the plane, and fell to Sleep...
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow dust that billows down the street,
Wiping its ass upon the window-panes;
There will be Time, there will be War-
ner,
To prepare a place to meet the presses that you meet;
There will be time for Russ and Rush to bloviate,
And time for all the worthless ways of glands
That lift and drop a dollop on your fate;
Time for Dick and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred distortions and revisions,
Before making toast of Cheney.
In the gloom the warmen come aglow
Talking of Guantanamo
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I care?"
Time to turn my back and nude-descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my chair--
[They will say: "How his chair is growing thin!"]
My morning coke, my dollar mounting firmly to boy Ken,
My bolo is immodest, but inserted by a marking pen--
[They will say: "But how his arms of war are sin!"]
Do I dare
Destroy the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minuteman will reverse.
For I have blown them all already, blown them up:--
Have known the evening, mourning, darkest noons,
I have mangled up my life with cocaine spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying thup!
Beneath the building from a farther plume.
So what should I consume?
And I have known the ayes already, known them all--
The ayes that fix you in a formulaic phase,
And when I am formulaic, scrawling with a pen,
When I am penned and scribbling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit on all the buttholes of my days and ways?
And who should I consume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are daisy-cut and grossly unfair,
[Caught in the gunlight, downed without a care!]
Is it blue stains on a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie are sold at table, with talk of shock and awe.
And should I then consume?
And when should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gunned at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the ruins
Of lonely kids in tatters, pouring out of windows...
I am just a pair of ragged shoes
Scuttling across the floors of silent news.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, creeps so peacelessly!
Scorched by hot zingers,
Asleep ... wired ... or country singers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you Cheney.
Should I, after koolade, coke and icees,
Have the strength to force the world to its crises?
But though I'm inept and blasted, inept and crazed,
Though I have seen many heads [grown slightly shorn] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and I'm no mad hatter;
I have seen the speeches of that city slicker,
And I have seen the eternal Bushman hold my coat, and Snicker,
And in shorts, I was DeLayed.
And would it have been worth it, after Oil,
After the kegs, the candy bar, the T,
Hugging the porcelain, a lonesome walk with you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have snapped at the batter with a towel,
To have squeezed the universe into a booger
To roll it toward some overstating question,
To say: "I am Nazareth, book of the dead,
Come back to sell you all, I shall smell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not how I vote at all.
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the fun set and the shipyards and the wrinkled sheets,
After the novel, after the hiccups, after the nose that trails along the floors--
And Kos, and Media Whores--
It is impossible to know just why I'm mean!
But as if a manic slattern slew the pervs on ladders in a screed:
Would it have been with child
If one, settling a pillow or throwing up on call,
And turning toward the window, should spew:
"That is not it at all,
That is not how I vote, at all."
. . . . .
No! I am no Abrahamlet, nor was meant to be;
Petrol attendant, bored, one that will screw
To stifle progress, start a war or two,
Advise the Dick; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to disabuse,
Lunatic, caustic, and supercilioos;
Full of false sentence, can't define "obtuse";
The Times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
I am, for you, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I prefer my money rolled.
Shall I kiss your left behind? Do I dare to be impeached?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and strut upon the stage.
I have heard Travolta singing, to my age.
I do not think that he will sing of me.
I have seen them hiding leeward in the caves
Bombing the dark hair of the slaves blown back
With my thoughts forever white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the star
By star-whores wreathed with seafoam green and crown
Till human votes awake them, and we drown.
- david k beckwith
