ROCK SNOT ELEGY
Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:07:16
Hello, Dear Friends! This won't always be a poetry blog, but I thought you'd like to read the latest "news poem" I read on Oz recently. The double-spacing makes it a little long, but you can manage that. Oh, and "rock snot" is an invasive algae.
ROCK SNOT ELEGY
1.
rock snot travels on felt-soled boots
the long-haired man with green eyes
blew his body right in two
got it on my phone
50 dead men all around and
their blood everywhere
mingled with loose change
broken watches
bits of the “cowardly attacker”
(whichever half)
his head stuck on a fruitstand down the block
2.
rock snot keeps moving stream to stream
Southward softly
on felt-soled shoes
the over-dressed windbag with stupid hair
gets a hung jury
so goes Old Chi Town
and down South in Juarez a smear
of red, white and blue blood
thickens on the pavement
policia
loitering
and a woman keens over the body whom
we’ll never know
as the Drug War goes on smokin’
across some desert border grid where nothin’ grows
3.
rock snot
one diatomic cell at a time
takes over
Cape Cod
one day watermelons next day slime
this guy Ramzi bin al-Shibh
doesn’t look like a guy you’d trust to mow your lawn
Bugs Bunny teeth
khol-eyed, droopy lidded, stoned perhaps on
God Himself
a bad bad guy closeted in Cuba since ought-six
who
by now must know which way to face
by the arrows CIA painted on the prison floors
and surely has finished his
lessons
on how
to
apply for a job opportunity in Yemen?
here’s the thing
the CIA had that piece of rock snot in a prison
they built
in Morocco
kif capital of the World!
How did that happen? If I paid taxes I’d wonder . . .
a bad bad Tom Cruiser of a purple plot
a make believe Sly’s still here muscle
man gun car prison human hero movie
all about this guy Ramzi from Old Shibh Town
who
didn’t have a chance to go down
to the local unemployment line
and part himself piously body from soul
because like Bing and Bob the CIA could ship him off
Morocco bound
4.
That’s how the rock snot moves
one long-haired green-eyed bomber at a time
one hung jury
one more body in the street
one bad bad guy
one CIA prison in Morocco at a time
one felt sole
at a time
and when you need “a break from America”
when it gets really scary around your money or your life
there’s always Abu Dhabi
and the Blackwater Princes
that’s where the rock snot dies
on the soles of
tough
leather
boots
David Ossman - from NYT 8/18-19/10