CONSTERNATION I



I acknowledge the American government's infiltration of my psyche.
My mental atmosphere has become grainy, hyphenated, 
cabbage-odored with seized distractions. 
The bar TVs, on but silent, are mirrored in the bar's windows,
silting distraction through the heads of the talk-befuddled drinkers.
Maelstrom of a bar evening, thought cut with patriot-glare:
our leaders can't be clinically mad because such would mean
the nation is rogue? Or a war machine asylum?
Hardly an asylum, rather an arsenal in self-engorgement,
"Full Spectrum Dominance"
                                                                            
I am interested in automatic erasure. 
I've read several times that Cuban exiles in Miami 
carried out bombings in Havana, directed from Miami, in 1997,
& that since the early 1970s, the CIA has created weather modification
to ravage Cuba's sugar crop, & turned over to Cuban exiles 
a virus which causes swine fever...
I read pretty well, but when I read information concerning 
American terrorism, it doesn't stick–
I must reread it if I want to keep specifics.
I have ingested so much Americana in spite of myself 
that it vacuums my brain, sucking up, into black holedom,
"negatives," making me study to remain articulate–

"It's a freak show, David, I'm not here."

Americana Logic 101:
"Let us live so well that we can give our government 
permission to intervene, brutalize, & reap."

How deep is the Chosen People lode?
Do I write (as tough as it is to write coherently),
because it is less demanding than to press through political walls?
For what have I built this House of Eshleman?
For it to be shuffled & dealt out to those
who'll turn it over as Ash Lemon Mouse?

                                [Orono, 26 September 2002]