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. )