Caroline says moments in time
Can't continue to be only mine


duress #1, by dronepop.

See You In the Unfunny Pages
-- by Klipschutz

Without DeLay (he’s French,
I hear) to bring it on,
the party of Lincoln Rockwell
scrambles for a statesman

from its embarrassment of statesmen
to replace the fallen Hammer
and manifest the trinity
of profit, prayer and power.

Soldiers get flak jackets
from their families for Christmas.
Body armor doesn’t grow on trees.

Sacks of flying spit
tell the Gray Lady what to print.
Money talks in baby talk to children.

-1/7/06
"Fighting Criminal Charges In Texas,
Tom Delay Steps Down As House
Majority Leader"

Woods Hole Ferry
-- by Franz Wright

Crossing briefly this mirrory still Galilean blue water to the heaven
of the affluent, the users-up, unconsciously remote
from knowing themselves
our owners and starvers, occupying
as they always have, to no purpose,
the mansions and the beauty of the earth
for this short while
before
we all meet and enter at the same door

Never Again the Same
-- by James Tate

Speaking of sunsets,
last night's was shocking.
I mean, sunsets aren't supposed to frighten you, are they?
Well, this one was terrifying.
Sure, it was beautiful, but far too beautiful.
It wasn't natural.
One climax followed another and then another
until your knees went weak
and you couldn't breathe.
The colors were definitely not of this world,
peaches dripping opium,
pandemonium of tangerines,
inferno of irises,
Plutonian emeralds,
all swirling and churning, swabbing,
like it was playing with us,
like we were nothing,
as if our whole lives were a preparation for this,
this for which nothing could have prepared us
and for which we could not have been less prepared.
The mockery of it all stung us bitterly.
And when it was finally over
we whimpered and cried and howled.
And then the streetlights came on as always
and we looked into one another's eyes--
ancient caves with still pools
and those little transparent fish
who have never seen even one ray of light.
And the calm that returned to us
was not even our own.