Las Vegas - 1950s
A series of poems
The explosion that won the war
The implosion that won the peace,
To the midnight sun a midnight glow.
Nature’s first gold is green,
Of that Forbidden Tree the trinity test did bloom
And Bloom the flowers of the gadget
They speak about war, but cold war
become hot peace never end
the dust of a long-forgotten snow troubles the memory.
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Mesquite forest quails the light fantastique,
Fast by the Oracle of God who submits Zeus and Thor
to his blinding heat and roaring fire,
a drive-in a creature double-feature,
down by the blue onion where you had a coke,
both kinds.
-
Running dry, of the precious commodity,
DiHydrogen Nonoxide,
A threat threat of growth and progress,
got-to-got-to get us some elbowroom,
Battle proud: there is a new land
as the rising of the moon under God’s grace.
we must have water, we must have water, we must have water.
-
fragmented the colors and the lines
do make abstract Expressionism on our map,
to the West is black
to the east is white
and the North and South are off of limits.
a pollock in the desert.
the deep in color.
And so the news is spelled nEWs
by the news, for the news, and of the news of blues
and the largest is how much of a hall does God takes his share.
symbolic market for ordinariness of the elite omnivore,
The Mother of Mankind, a rebel among angels,
-
Monte Carlo, a spinning whirring sideshow
in the journals of physics
and the shatter side of probability by chance.
Liquors dancing on random roof
a slender catch-all of distribution.
A pioneer of the distending age
of jackpots over splendid Savoy
under Fortunes club.
Bouldered down, on Freemont Sreet.
Dust of water, water of dust.
Across the iron curtain of the tracks
The black strap.
-
All was light and heat
until there came the strip.