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Twenty miles
of bad road, and ten miles of fair trail yet beyond, that is,
thirty miles past the dust-choked frost-heaved serpentuous snakeskin
shedding gravelled furrows
on roller-coaster hairpin switchbacks, leading up and up
in twisting loops among hanging hellcut meadows,
poised at the crest of terra massif's crown,
fifty miles from the asphalt ribbon-necklace
meandering through conifer-crowded valleys down below, dogging
rivers,
and another hundred miles from the nearest gas station-snicker's
bar-cold beer-diner
way up where the grizzlies play and the antelope phone home
and the silent, ringing echoes of the world's wailing rooftops
waft on wings of remnant jetstream breezes
where grazing clouds snag on storm-stunted pinyon
and gorse and bracken hide the sign
of long deep winters, wet springs and cool summer nights
where the distant rattlehum-whooshroar
muted clatter-mayhem bizbuzz traffi-commerce thunder
is a leaf-throb gesture felt as the breathpulse of waving sedges
travelers on their way to somewhere navigating the pass far below
and the caress of temple bells mergefuse with the clanging-jangle
of the
bigcity racket racketing, booming hiss
stacatto rumble chattering blast of society's loco-motive
hogging the mainline, ten-million supersleeper highball express-cars
clickity-clackety rocking along behind
the machinery's smokestack spewing a blanket, great wheels
merging in a horizontal streak,
dynamo hum spinning like a dervish millrace madness, sparking
in a shiva chorus to keep the lights burning, the pumps chugging,
compressors squeezing, and the fans whirring,
keeping the whole damn show cool and running and on-time and
always
>ON< >ON< >ON<
barely noticed in the subsonic throbbing multi-decibel grunt
and howl
are the steamships and freighters making port,
the channel buoys ringing in their concert or the
low groundswell braying of watchtower foghorns sounding out their
chant,
the sweep and crash of oceanic breakers, the moan of stormcells
raging
and several-hundred-million slamming slap-dash cylinders firing
*BAM!* at the very same Top-Dead-Center instant
here, where the sun is a whisper
and the mountains gradually flex and groan for decades in their
geophysical slumber
rolling oh-so-slowly wavecrests
toppling over eons
back of the beyond
in the tesselated outcrops and bare-rock castlements
where the very idea of headwaters
of raging torrents are borne and begin their trek
as spring run-off seeps and trickles, late summer
deep-bed oozing springs that gush, flowing down to the lure
of gravity's lodestone, molecular fingers that caress and stroke
the rubble,
scrape and wear away the combined heave and thrust
of drifting continental engines and volcanic forges,
grinding with the inexorable logic of wind and rain and frost
and sun
stripping the landmass corpse bare here,
making rich deposits there, rebalancing the ledger's domain,
streambanks and floodplains temporary accounts for the
soil and mineral economy,
silt and sediment payments on long-term basalt-granitic loans,
marbledust chipped off the giant's hips and shoulders,
rubbed away with infinite, timeless patience,
chipping away at the temporary deadlock
while the fractal skin of the living chariot throbs
in its slingshot freefall orbit around solsystem's main-sequence
center.
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In a place where
the manifest destiny of far-flung tribes crashed together,
a mingling of the gene-pool hammered into alloys
by the quest for civil and religious freedoms
provoked by the impetus of not-so-petty tyrannies,
complete with a
convoluted history
of genocide and oppression,
bitter clash of efficiency and idealism where
cultural diversity and racial (SIC) arrogance confronted the
archetypes of insufferable conceit,
on a
misty-blue/white
planet's panoramic northern continent
uplifted rolled out crunched up flooded gouged scoured baked
and drained
poised between the static equilibrium and dynamic tensions of
East and West and fated to fulfill
the contrarian (and contradictory) roles of sanctuary, liberator,
despot and paradise,
as well as
Beast and Bride
and Whore and Warrior,
a nation groaning with increasingly sophisticated hunger-pangs
for the oh-so-good-life in the
Quote Unquote Land of the Brave and the Free,
which is
quivering with
expectation and
rosyglowing with good fortune despite
pallor and sarcoma and scars interspersed
among the flab and potbellies and jowls
a real mixed bag
fat-cat perks
in high-rise condominiums, country-club suburbs and
thousand-acre hobby ranches, first-come rent-free park benches
and
instant public-housing ghettos and one-room Buick shanties,
the whole range of lifestyle mutations from one socioeconomic
extreme to the other,
each
lavishly, even cunningly represented;
Into this stew
of time and place so trampled and bulldozed,
on the cusp of this eon's third millennium,
amid the chaos and the Doppler-shifted banter, the decibel babble
clank and clatter
of cookie-cutter armies gathered waiting for the score
where
entire mountains
of coal, consumed, oceans of burning oil, and the potential energy
of lakes and rivers harnessed,
turning the screws that twirl the dynamos that power the grids
that trip the switches
that crank the wheels that whirl the spindles
that grease the skids that the whole damn Big-Top show of "smart"
machines run on and on and on
and on, on;
Mega-industries
of heat and light and print-journalism and electromagnetic broadcasting,
an infotainment dynasty, ascendant significance,
primeval ancient forests chewed up/mowed down to make reams of
semi- pulp-fiction pages
that satisfy the need for mystery revealed, mythology reinvented,
humor decoded and the identity/location of bargains presented,
where
Truth and News
and Agendas and Viewpoints achieve temporary immortality,
join the queue of databits flowing in the WWW matrix,
seeking assimilation into the maws of a collectivized understanding
(in the most generous sense of the term)
as
Democracy-In-Action
jumping through the hoops of a Liberal Experiment in
Representative and Informed Government via the info hiway,
By the People For the People, etc., chanting Amen Hallelujah
OMMM. . . . . . .
while
dragging the
chains and baggage,
pulling the caboose of derailed best intentions clattering behind,
into the goop, the mix-mash stew,
the give-and-take and one-up ante,
of
favorite political
persuasion, king-of-the-hill tourney,
each candidate for Chief-of-State waging clever choreographed
battle to assume the
cherished mantle reserved (for the last 200 plus years or so)
for
free-choice members of the exclusive white-guy Goyem fraternity
and so,
into the fray of words and wit and image and spectacle subsidized by whang-doodle special interests and big brother businesses and moral majority universities and fundamentalist superiorities and Unrepentant Patriots and Good-ol'-Boy Franchise Owners and Pie-Inna-Sky Lobbyists and Multi-Media Collectives and Madison Avenue Landlords, and so on and so forth,
the
Dueling Dancers
scratch their slap-happy TIC-TAC-TOE mumbly-peg line in the hallowed
last-stand metaphorical ground
and prepare for the final shoot-out in the best dang all-around
Hollywood High Noon tradition
with
Ya-Ya Demo-Republocratic
blather
stealing center-stage and obviating the credibility of any self-
respecting alternative vision,
convoluted sides of the same stamped coin,
endlessly extrapolating differences in degree and not of kind,
more
faux-sophisticated
knee-jerk conservatism parading as
"Bold Strategies to Embrace Opportunities" or some
such balderdash fodder
to tempt the jaded palate of
a
hypothetically-modeled middle-american fast-food appetite
but hey,
"Why sink
the boat when she floats, right, guys?" (wink-wink) speech,
on the one hand, and "NO, NO, we need a much better hull
design!" on the other,
variations onna theme,
but it's all still just water-sports anyway, eh?
enter King George, jr.;
His televised
smirk, cultivated sneer a mocking parody of James Dean's Rebel-for-the-Hell-of-it
Bad Boy attitude,
vulgar endorsement of ideals the post-war dispossessed had enough
sense
to oppose in principle and practice,
his
insouciant pose
an affected arrogant swagger (Jim Baker has nothing on this fella
you bet!)
assumed by the fair-haired golden-boy fronting for the New Deal
Right Constituency,
a stand-in nominee for the GOP's Punch-and-Judy Reform Platform,
high BS quotient and sound-bite profile,
the
candidate-of-choice
for the Quasi-plurality party with
across-the-board name-brand-recognition on a-parity-with-jesus,
honorary members all of the conservative branch of the
Well-Heeled Cream-of-the-Big-Cheese Bunch
ie.,
(golden-shower power-brokers, wheeler-stealer-dealers, movers-grinders-shakers, hearty-party-bosses, high-tech bang-gangers, soft-touch fancy-dancers, doublespeak pundits, moolah moghuls, corporate raider-traders, Ivy League groupies, Blue-Blood bigots, right-wing boosters, upper-management wanne-be's, rear-echelon bureaucrats, Sharksters, Tricksters and Tricky-Dick Fan Clubbers, and other klansmen of the "Me First! Trickle-Down Flavor-of-the-Month" Club)
a
veritable panoply
of voodoo saints and payola sinners, led by the duly-elected
despot father's
darling child, QB'ing the on-track game- plan grand-slam end-run
around the Rules prohibiting a modern Feudal Aristocracy, el
presidente's loyal Son laying siege against the
usurper's-of-the-throne in order to reclaim the family's heritage,
Hacienda Blanco, a real by-gosh chip-off-the
ex-CIA Director old man's block;
that is,
praise da lord
and passa da ammo,
puh-leeeeese. . . . . .
yadayadayada;
well, whatta ya know?
