The Mushroom Cloud

Poem from Like A Bird Knows To Sing

Aug 20, 2024

I don't need anything to come back
I'm quite happy with the way things are
Now things are finally on track,
in the past I made those things hard

I don't need things returning
I like it the way it is now
I can feel my mind burning,
As much as I will allow

I feel not a friend of memory lane
No reason to count the days
I'm grateful for them all the same,
I can count the many ways

But what do we mean when we say tomorrow?
Like a mystical window pane
With curtains dressed in sorrow
streaked with yesterday’s rain

If the clouds are worried
And the sunlight gone awry
Don't worry past midnight
Let the moonlight in your eyes

And tell the moon
We don't need anything coming back
Quite happy with the way things are
Things are finally on track,
In the past we made those things hard

I don't need things returning
I like it the way it is now
I can feel my heart is burning
You slowly kiss my brow

Let us be together
with two hearts yearning
For not a single thing
ever to be returning
We can sit together near the window
(Watching the world burning)

How grateful am I today?
Oh, let me count the ways
Let gratitude take me away from hell
Not let bitterness take me away

I have turned up every rock,
looking for it,
I told you once but then forgot
Some remember when they adore it

I've swept those things in life
that we make into little piles;

Blood, sweat, decay, bile

Who's on trial, here?
I'm expressing gratitude!
I cannot be chastised or baptized
in the broken waters of attitude

I offer no platitudes, expect just one;

You get wasted on bitters

Either for misery or fun
But nobody is a nun—not even the nuns,
The handle is broken,
The plumbers are done

I asked old Ague,
for her big old ham,
her son sells mattresses,
They used for the dam.

When the church got flooded,
And the prayers all floated,
And Jesus fell down in the water,
and became quite bloated

And the Buddhists on fire
While still in meditation
and those skinny Jews
in striped starvation,
and the crowds in Times Square,
waiting for bread,
and every one of them with
a hat on their head and a bowl in their hand

But perhaps, if it were in color,
and we could all starve, too
and maybe even pull the handle
on a victim or two

Yes, if we could have been there
how easy it would be
to get your picture in the paper
or two or three,

Believe me please,
or perhaps don't—it won't matter
the book is never-ending, its spine grows fatter,
fatter by the minute, wider by the hour,
longer by the day, taller than all the towers,

And so said the clerics and band-waggoneers
who blow smoke and offer spells
(to cure us all from fears)
And tell not so distant stories,
of not so distant hells,

But me, I prefer the soldiers,
or the ones they call the stoics
who knew being your own hero
would surely make you heroic,

I was young then..

And the book was filled up with bloody beaches of war,
And napalm soaked Vietnam,
I carted it off in my knapsack,
It felt like carrying a bomb
or, better yet, a tomb
or better yet a baby,
writhing in a womb,
or better yet still,
like sitting calmly in a room
by the windowsill
and the trees blow back
and the wind blows high,
and a giant fungi rises in the sky,
and the schools froze up and the textbooks bled,
every crime of every man
Everything done and everything said,
all the death and the decay, all the scalped heads,
All the busted reefs and their bioluminescent corals
All the blushed cheeks and adolescent morals
the mushroom cloud is growing, fuming in dread
The parades of soldiers arriving back home dead
the statues, the paintings, the busts and the heads,
of the state who racked up all the mighty votes
and wrote to their congress many regal notes

And we can't forget all the death and murder,
By every practical means and style,
they made up a list
it stretches for miles
and miles

And most of the lives,
well what can you mention?
Their names, cause of death?
It would just be momentum
but who's to say how to play?
who says there are rules?
who says they ought to be followed?
surely, only fools

You have to follow some of the rules
But you can't follow all of the rules

Just admit it already
You can see them all coming
Dances have filled their heads,
chanting and loud humming
with trumpets blowing
tubas wailing
and guitars strumming,
and when the fire bears down the scene
and the hearts patter is like
drumming drumming, drumming
I speak aloud, I'm so proud,
oh god, oh
god!
I’m coming
oh
god,
I’m
COMING, I am COMING!