Poems

Nothing says Infant better than
adorable, rude, lazy, and dumb.

Drop adorable, now you see
the nation under Trump’s thumb.

– Dave Read

Watch the horizon, or watch the tide;
Do both at once, for a carnival ride.

– Dave Read

With a cool exhale
that rustles trees
it sets behind, Sun

Draws campfire sparks
homeward, toward
the rising Sun.

– Dave Read

It’ll be different next time,
next time there will be no
hierarchy of actors

Tempted to take the $
and run or spin the motto
for marketing purposes –

And those peepholes poked
through the blindfold of Justice
by thirsty solons

who are, more often than not,
your brown-nosed classmates
who love to be bossy

who love to snap the bosses whip!

The kiss of Liberty is the people’s
aerosol; the person’s vaccine is the promise
each citizen-scientist of the American experiment

Makes to each other laborer
in the soil of truth, toiling for
the harvest of honesty.

The school’d poet is no poet –
no poet worth her NaCl
obeys a dean or a bully

Like Fame who swears
your soul remains pure
through thirty wash cycles.

Take the money, now,
and run to the Youtube
studio for your cameo.

The TV’d rockstar is a poser
– only Dylan quit the show,
the rest kowtow’d, bent low

To accept from Ed Sullivan
the market’s noose, like a medal
hung from Branded name’s neck.

Who knows the crush and the crumble
and the crunch of life under the feet
of the callous society, a culture bereft

Of barbershop quartets, community
colleges overwhelmed by amateur
poets yearning to ignite high school kids

With the fire of language and the
ferocity of the whole ghost nation
that now gasps for air.

Dave Read

Not to the sea, these lemmings –

these native citizens,
now consumers,
amble proudly over the edge
of their demography, eager

to fulfill the marketer’s dream.

– Dave Read

This is for my neighborhood bookseller, who shrugged at my alarm that the vaunted Paris Review had been established as cover for the espionage activities of Peter Matthiessen; he told me his own C.I.A. buddy assured him that all the spies are liberals!

It is not for the Values
of Democrats or Republicans
that the C.I.A. works

in darkness, but in service
to Valuable, herself.

Dave Read