OF MICAH
You know all those biblical names : you can walk
through an old graveyard and see twenty of them.
They ring so true and real. It's a very strange sensation,
hanging idly there with Bills and Bobs and Bobbies.
What has happened to sensation? In Laurel Hill
Cemetery, in Philadelphia, the nice lady showed me
the icebox on wheels wherein they used to keep the
dead for viewing. Civil War days or thereabouts.
Some crazy factory name was on it, and all. They
made an industry of cooling the dead to be seen.
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That night I went to sleep with flowers on my brain.
I somehow can't always believe the dead are dead, but
then what's the same. No matter. My mother's dead; she
died years back, working a polling station for some infested
election. My father's dead; long gone, from a crazy house
where they only wished they had ice. His mother too;
pretty much the very same thing. And then here am I.
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A reformer, a revolutionary of ways. My fingers are coiled
'round some already ceded trigger, having lost my marbles to
the powers that be. I kiss no ass, but I kill no bones. They
should think of themselves as lucky - senators and congressmen,
Presidents and their fucking ladies too. Movie stars and the
big-time singers and dealers of woe. Screw them all and may
they die. I'd love to cleanse this country to the bone. But, for
all of that, I'm supposed to salute and stand for the pledge,
act like a fool and say rah-rah-rah. The gun? Oh, I've hid
that long ago in the meadow, by the well, at the lea.
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Today, I met five Russian ladies, and two guys who
were driving them around. Russians too, husbands
or whatever. We were at Liberty State Park, staring
at the ass of the Statue of Liberty in the pouring rain.
My dog was at my side, and soaked to the bone as
was I. 'What is her name?', they asked with their accents,
'she's lovely.' I replied to them kindly, knowing they'd
meant my dog. 'Liberty, I call her; Liberty is her name.'
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