SUPERDUMMY'S LAMENT

(A FAUX CANNON FO' CHRISTMAS)

Night after night kneeling before mechanical altars
Down on my knees before the gears in all my
years turned
to minutes all my moments
Flown, my face grown
old ground
down
to nothing in the interface
Between technology & nature. Every day I go
do or die for Miss America’s right to go
out to eat
And parade her lover, and her meat,
ain’t life sweet
as a mafia soldier, honor bound to negativity
Where you can’t hear nobody pray
Because we’ve always done it this way
And our intentional stupidity has always gotten its payoffs
And defied the laws of gravitas & gravity

God of Grease and Gears in all my years
In whose presence it is sacrilege to speak
Especially of love, millions of official murders prove
life is cheap but no easier to let go of.
I’ve been your soldier, in the dance
of insignificance have made my bones
on the air, the trees and the sky for you
you know I love you like a brother
Why do you have to hurt me? Now
The whole world is broken
Automan has spoken.
People tell me they can’t afford to save any more money
This year, can’t stop chopping wood long enough
To build a better stove, recoup or reprise
The miles they drove, can’t afford solar, wind
Or geothermal, the pundits don’t have time
For smokestack algae biodiesel

Cold rain falling on the roof of the Sushi Garden
Where I kneel down NOT
to pray
But to put in a relay, at the end of the day
I got nothin to say, I'm in over my head,
just take off my tights
and cape and crawl into bed pull the covers up
above my dread.
I give it my all and the faces of want want more
Cold rain falling as I drive down the string of city lights
I once walked in a personal ritual
I hear the roar of a distant ocean in the traffic
Pull in the vacant road by Old Times Café
A flash of antique farm equipment
Glows enshrined
And warm with rust in the headlights
Grim reminder of endless progress
And things somehow staying the same
And no one but ourselves to blame
Feel the comforting tractor throb of the diesel engine
Its lights turned on the burned mess
Of a condensing unit that had an electrical fire
If we’re all in this together, why am I somehow
Still always all alone?
I throw up my hands and go home

Kneeling before mechanical altars
The voice of reason falters,
A tale at once too horrific and banal
For Barbara Walters. Nobody asked me,
Nobody begs the question, why do I still have to ask it?
Why are we doing this, where are we going
And why am I in this handbasket?
For love or for bagels and lox
Why am I in this Skinner Box?
Ships dragging the oceans for heavy metal contaminated fish
Engines gobbling fuel thousands of miles to put them on a plane
And fly them packed in dry ice more thousands of miles
To be refrigerated so people can drive to sit in air conditioned
Over lit spaces and feel like they’re eating natural and organic
While down below or up above the mechanic
Kneels, weeps and curses
Whatever gods may be that chose to put him on the Titanic
He once had dreams of being an artist, a gardener,
A craftsman, didn’t we all
Before the throw of the dice
Before the fall?

Kneeling before mechanical altars
A good soldier in a bad war
whispers:

“DON’T
The fools know the more of them
And the more they play he game the less
Of us there are?”

While he works
for people he loves
While he knows
they’re jerks, o brave new world
& such beautiful technology
transcendant independent of biology an embarrassment
of riches, he says,

“DON’T
the sonsabitches
ever think this time the ship may sink BECAUSE
the ice is melting?”

And then he tells himself:

“It’s not as bad as you think it is
It’s not as good as you think it is.
The whole shit’n deal
Has nothin to do with what you feel
My country tiz of show biz it
just is maybe
dumb luck will get us thru
Say it often enough maybe that’ll
Make it true

Silence is golden logic is not, life is hell
We tell
The truth the way the words lie
Votes are being stolen big wheels are rollin
Over nature’s largess you can kiss your ass
and all the space there is
in our time goodbye
we’re doing the denial dance
spending our children’s inheritance
I must be dreaming
while I work I hear people screaming
in secret prisons I want
to help them but I can’t seem to get out of mine
The government says it’s all for good reasons
Give us your rights and just go shopping
Now & then or else
The terrorists win the machinery of our love
is loud by day, by nite
fall my ears are ringing now is the
hour the lust for
power
Is just a silly song we can’t stop singing