I walked across
the mud-soaked field

like a train sound
was underneath me

wildflowers bent
& turned in circles

the sun turned
black smoke rising

& then there was Anne
& her chainsaw

& strewn bluebonnets
& she said

sure beats a scythe
& yes it does

but isn’t that
Texas for you

So Jimmy says
Hey
man
why
you
hey
what’s
with
stop
hey
So says Jimmy

💋💖🔥🍆

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Caught his wife riding a
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Exposed to Roundup®.
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thinned from years
of smoke & drink
& now the stroke
my father died in
hospital shitting
the bed but not
his bed & isn’t
that just like him
marking territory
until the end

my mother
died before
she saw this
day a sixty-
sixth time,
the cancer
seeping into
her bones
she thought
only back-
aches &
her cells
eating away
her cells
too much,
too every-
where to
do more
than accept
the inevitable
& hospice
& then
my sister
watched her
thin &
two weeks
later when
my mother
left she
went quiet
in the night,
no rage
against the
dying light,
one moment
there & the
next round
gone, nurses
plying midnight
floors while
our old
friend death
waltzed in;
I like to
think her
father held
the door

they came down the street
to the wailing child & the
flashing lights, the hospital
shrugging the curb, a pile
of steel & cinders & dust
& the sky a ragged wound
beneath the screaming
jets & the mothers round
with agony & meanwhile
the madman in his bunker
shoves tin soldiers across
the table demanding the
map play by his rules