Once, I took a train from Chicago to Salt Lake City
west of the plains, into the mountains
and from the Great Divide onward there were phone cables
suspended from wooden crosses the whole rest of the way
not towers or poles that sort of looked like crosses
but actual, old fashioned wooden planks nailed together
at right angles, and as the train rose and fell around corners
through tunnels plunging into valleys, they never left my sight
I looked out my long window
and as we passed, imagined a different person crucified to each one.
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Salt Lake Crucifixion Blues
A Bike Riding Revenge Poem
Biking is about Math.
How much time until that signal light turns?
How much space will I have in between traffic and that car door
if it suddenly swings open? If I have multiple errands to run
is there someplace I can get them done without having to ride back and forth across the city all afternoon?
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Pro Choice For Life
Rhode Island department of child, youth, and family services case 93195
is rooting through the trash when a voice from above lands on his skull like a brick:
that’s disgusting, don’t you care what your mother would think?
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Aggressive, Yet Incidental
We’re all in the same band – don’t act like you don’t know me!
We’re all in the same band – don’t act like you don’t know us!
I don’t care who’s watching, I don’t care who sees
I know that we been workin and we forget to breathe
So get up in the circle, thrash around the room
stomp and pit and laugh across the floor just like we used to do!
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Ramsey County Blues
Addiction is a sickness, not a fucking crime.
Offenders in possession should be seein’ treatment
instead of doing time, but if inmates ain’t in jail,
prisons miss their quota and States ain’t makin’ fines
bad guys in jail, good guys go free…
but most convicted people are just like you and me!
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Easy Being Green (For Ona)
Left my car homeless, bottom of the exit
with a sign for the cops to contend with,
said: “Work For Change – Gone Till November”
Have traveled and I’ll shotgun agendas.
Start walking, less talk and more motion
Tried to pick up all the trash along the shoulder
but there was more than I was strong enough to hold up
…READ HOME
Guns Up!
Like farmers up against the bank, decades fightin’ for their land
workers up against the mill, all day standin’ straight up still
drivers headed for the docks, caught between the road and clock
miners up against the boss, black lungs pumping in the dark
cutting hours at the plant, loss of rent and benefits
with no option left but strike – hard hats on the picket line
single mothers, double shifts, with no healthcare for their kids
I am not unbreakable, but I won’t cry off
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Flies On The Water
It’s a war just to begin…
Sometimes it takes all you got just to reach the beginning.
forget what comes after you even get the chance to finish.
the arc of the grind is long, but an honest man
knows no promise at the bottom of a jostled olive branch.
look back through each and every fault in Gene -
you’ll see everybody got a Separate War & Piece,
fallen to leaves, sand and the mud,
the strength of a dove to anchor your blood.
an ark in the storm, stranded for months -
it takes every charge in your gut
just to make the start of the gun.
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Hope City Sky
We’ve been gone from home so very long now
why’d we wait so long? don’t even know how
signs passin’ by- all look the same now
Eight weeks is forever; Road feels like Home now
when you’re almost free, eyes start to light up
you don’t wanna eat, teeth clamp and grind down
one Providence I can put my faith in
Olneyville to Fox Point – I can almost taste it
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Prayers For Atheists
Prayer is older than religion,
it’s older than god and priests.
it’s older than money, music, or bibles -
it’s even older than speech.
it doesn’t mean beg god to get what you want,
it’s war just to be alive.
n’ sometimes you gotta call out to all that’s beyond
just to reach the universe inside.
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