America (an exquisite corpse) nothing news happening brutal
graybeard cocaine
machomen seed their ground the crushingdead return themselves
on on BlackFriday again and again and again and again advertising
strings from the shrinking alderman to the congressman running
north money talks to the half full husbands of half
empty wives hidden in closets preparing for spring yes the edges of
things
remain relatively stationary America is still the pulse of The Next
Big Thing and everyday marijuana and poisoned water and rude cars
and shrinkproof cotton canvas and three thousand miles good
enough for the grocery boys and
I book the first chance I get to score a detective novel while you rock
silently in white
clouds making parley hands the burden of destiny is absurd packing
houses for millions of distinct fragmented ravings feeding our
migrating flock
and our solitary sick vomiting their hind feet and lower latitudes in
cashier boarding houses by the road side while the evening over
flows with 300 serious tribes 300,000,000 serious warriors
all ready to wage serious big league hardcore war the millionaire
manufacturers the
neck women the limping men the meat children the crowd
bargainers the all seeing watchdogs the losts the silents the
stacks the young on the streets the thieves of one another the
knife fighters and the swarming victims all without names plunging
into anonymity beat out of time out of hope out of luck left
with a million ghost smiles pinching themselves smelling looking
stroking obsessing clinking creaking years of psychiatric
judgement army fodder and dog rejects with
economy thin gas clouds washing each other’s hands singing
typewriter anthems off key fishing promiscuously ruthlessly in
body toil and neck sweat
xanax junkie good will arbitration dismissed desperately rising plain
everybody families eat tomorrow tonight as future whorehouse
queens pass unnoticed through the rainbow that kills the day and
arrests the night characters movements growths lessons
screams murderers advance move around feel at home in
the hollow vastness scatter the congregation feed avid mouths
with dank musty ale dreams and smoke from the ash cart mirroring
crowds of joggers multitudes of marijuana millions playing
practical jokes on our frozen czar
under large black buzzard shadows camouflaging poetry news of the
war on the young whose sneer velocity enumerates nothing without
front page headlines
in the New York Times and the Washington Post and cover articles in
Time Magazine and Newsweek and the Economist and
special coverage on ABC and CBS and CNN and FOX and MSNBC
and NBC all churchsolemn and scholargrave feeding the flock old
grubber history while our modern day napoleons strut from their
hedge homes sounding like trillionaire Trotskyite beggar saints
sweating proud and living the essence of the heart of the American
dream pretty boys who play for pay on television sets falling 84
stories killing
in court and getting away with it no body meets solitary
confinement

Charlie Newman was born in Newark, NJ, has been writing poetry since 1956 and has been published in After Hours, Saw, Old City Cool, Ink & Ashes, Polarity and others. He has a chapbook and 3 books on his own, shares one book with Ron Whitehead, has been in 2 Chinese/American anthologies, and 3 CDs.