Gallipolis

You're straight and rigid,
can't move your hips.
You're cold and frigid,
yet you've got loose lips-
the clicking tongues
that ruin lives;
the tut tut people with
busybody eyes,
cornbread brains,
and gravy souls,
thin layers of blame are
filled with holes
sliced open by knives
from floral scabbords.
Skeletons hide in ev'ry cupboard.
Revenge here's a virtue
Freedom's a sin.
All are judged by wealth
and color of skin.
Ev'ry meal is served with fries
ev'ry conversation full of lies,
and ev'ry wall has ears
ev'rything is smeared
with sugar-coated spit
and your honeyed-hate.
(You're deep fried shit
is hard to take!)
"Welcome" you smile
yet sneers aren't concealed.
Your down home approach
has not revealed
sincerity, love or true faith.
Go back to your trailer dreams.
Go wrestle snakes
during your hollow hymns.
Your Goddess was raped
by y'all long ago,
by coalmines, phosphates
and polluted snow.
I see your safe little paintings
in your safe little frames;
all still lives and blandscapes
and all the same.
No passion, no art,
no joyful expression,
all static and frightened
figures of repression.
Repressions you chose
Repression you've craved;
tell me why your souls'
not yet been saved?
For all your churches
for all your bells,
competitive clanging
Christian hard sell.
If you're saving "sinners"
sin's what you'll find,
those aryan demons
possessed your minds.
There's your cardboard Jesus
-by Bob Evans old farm,-
he's white, blue-eyed
but bearing arms?!!
White visions of Christ
white sugar, white bread
white only graves for the
white only dead.
White picket fences
round the white only homes
white sheets in white dryers,
burnt corners coated in foam.
Dangerfield rainbows
in black and white
prove no committee here
finds a color they like.
You've killed your children
by grounding their fire
you're frightened they
might act on your secret desires
to toast Dionysius
to run with Pan
to dance around cedars
to torch the klan...
to drink the nectar
of forbidden fruits
to mix flesh and skin
destroying the roots
of the "must be's, should be's"
from the tree of Dumbth...
that poisons the earth
and blots out sun.
Inside each heart
is a trapped scream.
No boxed up law
can contain it's stream
of echoes, echoes bounce off stars
visible echoes in children's art
crying "freedom, freedom
in ev'ry mark and line,
shaping "freedom, freedom-
don't police my mind
with your disapproving looks
and your patronising prayers
your quotes from good books
and judgemental stares.
Let me howl at the moon.
Let me express my bliss.
Don't imprison my soul
Oh Gallipolis."
The trickster here is alive and well
foundation of quicksand
sucking us into
bottled laugh hell.
For this french city
was built on a lie.
The nights here are loud
from long ago sighs
from ghostly first settlers
still stalking the skies.
Middle classed dreamers,
tricked by their own kind,
have left their imprint-
soul shadow behind.
Gallipolis is loud
with the Raven's laugh
they swoop on owls,
after dark.
The french city gossip
the french city hate,
the small town suspicions
seals it's fate.
Labels are stuck on
ev'ryone's head.
Like parasitic spirits,
like crowns of lead.
No alchemist's art
can shift this law,
the crow's fly backwards,
the virgins are whores.
It's maya, illusion,
it's the Judas kiss,
all betrayal, confusion
in Gallipolis.
It's wide open spaces and small narrow minds
stains on welcome mats,
hidden moonshine.
It's black-eyed wives
and teenaged moms;
it's disabled husbands-
misogynistic sons.
It's anti-abortion
it's anti-sex education
it's anti-precaution
and pro child medication.
It's anti-joy, anti-happy,
anti-art, anti-fun,
anti-rollerblading on sidewalks
but pro rights for guns.
It's lacey curtains
and hummingbird feeders,
cash under the table
and crack addict leaders.
It's Baptist hookers
and born-again drunks,
it's racists with halos,
and rose-perfumed skunks.
It's "they keep to their place,
and we keep to ours,"
It's straight little rows
of imported flowers.
It's social workers
with anti-social laws,
it's Ohio red-bird
with vulture's claws.
It's covered with chocolate
it's filled with cream,
it's a suicidal diabetic's
total wet dream.
It's shootin' rabbits,
it's huntin' deer.
It's aiming high
for that Walmart career.
It's drunken judges
it's corrupt police.
It's greeting card journalism.
It's a salad with grease.
It's "if you scratch my back"-
"I'll stab you in yours"
it's sinus infections
amd allergy sores.
Even the mothman left
cos he couldn't compete
with the e'er present evil
of french city's elite.
With dysfunctional families
who stick to their own-
it's small town arrogance
right to the bone.
The riverbank statues of
"the first view".
claim what? "Injuns were blind?"
You've forgotten them too?
Your history's selective,
your bigotry well,
nurtured by the collective
in this cheesecake hell.
You lead inauthentic lives
masked in medicated grins,
nothing penetrates
your city's thick skin.
All hail looney town
and the great GDC
run by the madmen
where the inmates are free.
Hyperactive cowboys
in homophobic best
hide their brown papered pornos
full of rump pumpin' butt sex.
Gallipolis, with it's small town pride,
it's small town thinking,
is the open mouthed bride
of Atlantis-sinking
Atlantis-gone.
A watery permanence
with unconcious song-
that burbles through oceans,
rises in mists,
drifts up the river
to Gallipolis.

Break invisible chains
of family guilt.
Shake away shame,
burn grandma's quilt.
Revive your heart;
adventure, explore.
Make your life your art,
reclaim spirit, restore
your broken hope,
swim up river
get wet and float....
away...away...from this bitches abyss
be free and leave.
Leave Gallipolis.

(written in 2001. I didn't like Gallipolis very much. )

A new year's bang!

2009 started with a bang. My darlin' hubby and I, both enjoying this island of middle age and the relative quiet sanity that comes with it, have put away our wild partying habits of our youth, We've exchanged flirting with strangers for the comfort of gazing at each other over scrabble boards while wearin' our long johns.

And so, we opted for a "quiet night in" for New Years Eve; just the two of us. A big crock pot of stew offered it's warm comfy aroma to the air, the woodstove was busily pumping out the heat, and downstairs we had the gameboards set up - readying for a night of simple amusement. (We turned the telly off! No way were we going to resort to watching the ball drop in New York and the fireworks goin' off on Sydney Harbor bridge etc...we're not at the point where we have to watch international others enjoyin' themselves for our entertainment! It always looks so glamorous and ritzy when you watch celebrations from afar, you tend to forget that the camera doesn't pick up the scent of vomit and urine that wafts from those same far away streets. Believe me, Singapore isn't so exotic when the streets are full of regurtitated saki and noodles..I should know I spent new years eve there in 1994, but that's whole other blog for another time.)

"Let's just have a few beers and stay home," I suggested to my mister. And he agreed, relieved that he didn't have to deal with navigating the streets full of party goers and breathalysin' cops.

So he popped round to the local certified to pick up some beers.

He was gone a long time.

"Must have popped in the local VFW for a drink," I thought to myself. "Certified might be closed after all".

An hour later my mister comes home all white and shakey. He looked like he'd just bumped into his ex wife.

"You ever looked down the barrel of a gun?" he asked, (he doesn't like to think so, but my mister has a dash of the dramatics about him, always starts a story with a theatrical attention grabbing opener!)

Apparently he was paying for the beer at the local certified when they were interrupted by a young thief - wearing a ski mask no less. (So very cliched. They are not very imaginative the thieves around here in Ohio.)

The language the thief used was also disappointingly hackneyed: "Give me all your cash motherf*cker, and do it now!" Sounds like a crips reject.

While the guy at the counter willingly obliged and began handing over all the money to the unoriginal ski mask wearin' twerp facing him, my mister examined the gun that was bein' waved in the air so threateningly.

Now then, my mister might not be able to rattle off Albert Einstein's theory of relativity at the drop of a hat (or should I say ski mask?). He might not be clear on why Romeo and Juliette topped themselves, (I did try to point out to him that it might not have been quite the same love story if they had lived, had four kids, with Romeo being unemployed and with both of them having to deal with nasty in laws); but he does know his guns!

He was raised on a farm by his grandparents, two strict military colonels. He goes hunting every year. He knows his guns.

He says he was intrigued by a red mark on the hammer of the gun this thief was waving around in the air like a cheerleaders's baton. When you are holding a heavy piece of equipment like that, you tend to want to keep it steady. Either the thief was a total knobhead at gun handling, or this little object he clutched was a plastic replica. My mister says the thief was leaning forward with all his weight on one foot, which was a bit stupid, because it would be easy for anyone to push him over. He says he thought about pushing the guy over for a minute, but then thought better of it incase the guy had an accomplice outside. (Who knows his friend might have been heavily armed with a water pistol!!!)

When ski mask cliche man was finished gathering up his illegal takings (couldn't have amounted more to a few hundred bucks), he turned and pointed the dubious looking piece of armery towards my husband and said "lie down bitch".

And this is where I am both proud of, and horrified by, my husband's reaction.

He said "no".

He said the thief paused for a moment, his brown eyes blinking disbelievingly through the eyeholes of his knitted face gear staring at my husband. And then he did what all thieves are famous for. He ran away.

That's a hell of a way to find out it was a toy gun!

When my husband finished telling me the story of his new year's eve adventure, I crumbled. I was thinking I would never again send him out at night for beer- milk- eggs anything! Then I got good and angry. "How dare some stupid punk intimidate a neighborhood into being too scared to go out for groceries!"

It's probably just as well I didn't go with my husband. I don't know what I would have done in that situation. If alone, I daresay I would have complied with the thief's demands, no matter how idiotic. But I am fiercely protective of my loved ones, and the thought of some young idiot trying to intimidate my husband makes my blood boil.

So, a hex on you young thief where ever you are. May your ski mask give you a nasty facial rash, may your gun, toy or not, jam permanently and may all the fear you've induced in others be returned to you threefold so that you pee yourself during your next pathetic "hold up". May the cops get the dna from your unvolunteered urine, and may your little bitch botty be harmed by others wearing sand paper condoms when you land yourself where you belong- in prison!

Ah, there, I feel a bit better now.