Farm

 

The butter is hard--

the biscuit takes it like a punch.

Eat your crumbs, child.

The milk expands, exploding the jug.

Cold cows care for nothing,

least of all the farmer's hands blue on the udder. 

This is agri-business. There are rules.

The clerk is here to count the kernels.

 No kindness from crows hard and polished as obsidian.

The vane is a zig-zag escapee

shouting "Freedom!" from inside the wind's mouth

where white teeth worry at fogged-up windows.

Automated fakes pass out promises

in Dixie cups, hats bobbing like generator vent caps,

a rooster in every head, erupting with cold words. 

Paint the chickens black and white

and dress them in freezer bags like crunchy raincoats.

Salute the magpie, child,

for luck, your ribs bent into a horseshoe and nailed

above the big open door

where our policies are performed.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Philip K. Dick

Saw 101010101

 

No one has ever seen Mr. Cobol.

He's like an eclipse, we all use special mirror boxes, but still

he is bright, electrical, and smells of Ozone cologne. 

His disembodied voice materializes out of the intercom.

"Get down from there and report to my office."

Which one of me, I wonder?

No one has ever been to Mr. Cobol's office. 

It's said it's down a long hall, through a tube and up a ladder.

Some say he dances there on the head of a pin.

I select full harlequin costume and megaphone,

trumpeting, "Mr. Cobol, Mr. Cobol. wherefore art thou, Mr. Cobol?"

It's not love, but it's urgent. I need this paycheck.

Mr. Cobol responds--out of the ether!--with mechanical poetry

any simp could compose. I loose my infinite number of monkeys

and hear Mr. Cobol howl jaggedly, bleeding junk data.

Now Mr. Cobol's shadow self emerges, creeping though the ducts

for the air conditioning and all of our eyes. Many go blind.

I play a saw, wahhh wooooaaahh slashing his scores, stee-rike!

Some say that Mr, Cobol is the Ultimate Umpire,

regal, invisible, all-powerful, robed in Rules like Nebuchadnezzar

and the score is always 1-0. I saw lovely Sally in half, now there's 2.

It's said that Mr. Cobol has learned to play the saw, too,

but I know better. My monkeys have him moaning wahhh woooahh

over the intercom, making calculations, spitting out memos.

Me: Two.

MC: One!!!!

Monkeys: five!!!

MC: zeeeerroooooo...

Me: Nine!

MC; zee roooe

Monkeys: Nein! 

Mc: uhhhhhwaahhh oooo

Me: Since I sawwww her standing there!

MC: oeeoowww, oggghh

Monkeys: Not your steppin' stone!

Me: Stoned?

MC: one...zero...liftoff...

Monkeys: happy trails, pardner!

Me: Haw! better skeedaddle!

MC:

MC:

MC: master

MC: master of

MC: Master of Ceremonies

Monkeys: Evacuate!

Me, wearing balloon pants and tapping head: Can't touch this!

Bette Davis: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

_________

for desperatepoets "Slam At The Singularity Corral. "

Note: In All About Eve, Bette Davis actually said "bumpy night", not "bumpy ride", but the misquote serves my ending better. 

Music: William Mapother plays the saw for Brit Marling in Another Earth.