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October 12, 1999
Six billion.
Doubled in less than forty years.
Can you count a billion?
Nine zeros times 6
Means what?
Hands, fingers, stomachs, mouths
Six (6,000,000,000) billion
Elbows
Bracing one against the other
For whatever reasons
The Earth becomes cement
The sky ripped apart
The tiger, the hawk, the elephant
Die
Bones in a graveyard
Overgrown with weeds
Distended open-mouthed babies cry
Needlessly
Choking on air
Too thick to breathe.
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Sounded the drum of his
Spent generation
Bobbity bomp bomp jazz me man
On the road without a home
War-orphaned
Drifting through the passing
Years
Nameless streets, forgotten bars
Lampposts dripping on dark corners
Hands to roll a cigarette
Words and women dropping in and out
Bottles to pour salvation
Soothing fire
In the cold flat of night
Eyes open and close
The music sassy, blue
Pounding
Surprising rhythms
Making it up
Beat by beat
As you go.
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The Reverend Jedediah Judah Kane
Smith
Held the holy book aloft
And spewed damnation on the frightened faithful.
If he could
He would have sent them straight into the fires of Hell
For being human.
Instead, he picked up the stash
from the collection plate
And slipped out the back door with Mrs. Thorncrockett
When no one was looking.
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Was a User of a Loser
Smooth-shaven pig-hearted boy
So deceivingly dapper in his three-piece suit
He drove a Mercedes without a lease
And combed the trusts of the pretty
Young girls
Through the unzipped locks
Of his nether regions.
His smile opened so many
Unsuspecting doors
That should have been barred with
Wisdom
But too few see beneath
The surface
The sparkle in the eye that only glitters
In the darkest of places.
* "Less Than Infinity" was first published in Hinterland Litzine, and "Kerouac" first appeared in Pogonip.
