Goethe’s Death Throes

I once said it was the sight of sights:

A canyon of red sand and green speckled

Christmas in the flesh; cold, hard and true-

Stingy eternity! Cept that cool breeze

and hot sun handing us days

rotating axes unrolling vistas:

chiaroscuros of pines and aspens

dead or alive as men in machines who

pound asphalt singing till finish-lines

rise from space at a moment’s notice–

before the twenty-first birthday, almost

the great pinnacle of America

when Mr. Adams crafted legislation

and home was a rusty boxcar

before Walmart Supercenters with more

life than Mesopotamian ruins:

harbingers of bountiful harvests

sowing the succulence of transcendence

and consecrating our eternal warfare

to expropriate every mote of dust,

and know all there was to know.

I suppose, maybe, it makes sense.

At least, more than we supposed

when God warbled and Man whispered,

leaving His echoes etched in soil

taking root for reincarnation

atop the bones of bitter generals

dreaming of wholesale slaughterhouses

gazillions of dollars, infinite glory!

strangling that savage oxygen till we

buy a gun but forget ammunition so–

let the Pacific be

and now, please,

hold me close,

please, please!

Hold me close.