American Side of Heaven
At death, the mind's a frozen lake
but then the ice melts,
giant lilies pop up, and
you walk on them,
your sandals scattering
shiny green angels.
On the other side
They're all calling you,
Telling you to hurry
from underneath a Big Top
labeled "Yard Sale."
There's Saint Peter in huge stripes
shouting about a sale on mirrors.
Then you spend hours, or is it eons,
walking by tables of padlocks, fly
swatters, shirts good as new, and look!
Clouds are wrapped in bright yellow
ribbons, and hurry, the fireworks
start at closing time.
The CEO
bursts thru certified piles of greed
with pelvic heaves of junk bonds, on
foreclosed clouds he fattens & feeds.
On carpeted portfolios he rides.
Watered stock fills his celestial pool.
Myriads of shareholders embellish his
churning bowels.
Within the plastic trading pit,
he launches his floating debt
Clothed in the wind and tall,
he diversifies, cross-trades and launders.
Pork shares are all his faces,
T-bills the flesh of his flanks.
His gargantuan buy-outs fall like sleep
and our mouths sell-off a prayer to
hush our panic and pawn like fear,
but as we lie naked within his lair,
his hostile takeovers pounce upon us there.
The Palm Reader
You'll have a small non-speaking part
in a disaster at sea
Your guardian angel will wear a clip-on halo
You'll be taken as seriously as an MC
with an unzipped fly
You'll stomp grapes and chunks of your heart
in the same rusted tub
Wherever they go, your children will fit in
like an opera at a truck stop
Your wife's lips will be as gentle
as the steel spikes on a climber's boots
Already the maggots are pruning themselves
for your arrival
You'll be an atlas of dead-end streets
Your body and soul will live in separate camps
fighting to drink from the same straw
You're my left-hand man, the devil will snore
That's another $10 if you want to hear more
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