10 November 2016

Some Country Music (poetry)

It has been more than a few months since I last posted. Well, yes. Here is an impromptu piece composed yesterday in reaction to the American election. More things to come when I can.



Some Country Music (for Wednesday 9 November 2016)


Place of lost welcome, place of faithlessness, place of the disenfranchised, place of glib hunger, walled off place, place of broken windows, place of honey, place of gouged certainties, place of barely invisible menace, place of unrequited promises, place of vinyl siding, despondent place, place of recycled batteries, place of scorched all-season radials, place of without, of the less-than-remarkable, place of uneven hygiene, stolen place, place of dissolving hazards, place of smeared lipstick, place of tossed-off b-sides, place of jeans with the knees torn out, tongue-in-groove place, place of small mercies, place of the difficult, that and not this place, place of compassionate hatreds, place of leaky pipelines, place of the backward and the unredeemed, another place, place of the more-or-less, place of coal-fired remorse, place of chained bicycles, place of a few more regrets than you thought you had, place of stale ketchup-flavoured potato chips, punk place, place of the awful and brave, place of stark miracles, place of poorly sutured gunshot wounds, someone else’s place, place of comb-overs, place of flight risks, uncharted place, place of robust decrepitude, place of sweet fritters, unlikely place, place of the remainders, place of special sauce, place of conflicted dreams, place of beatings, place of income splitting, place of diversified wants, place of barren shelves, of selective plenitude, unthinkable place, place of cracking asphalt, place of various plastics, unspeakable or unspoken place, place of adoptive parents, place of hatreds, place of cinched foreign aid, place of disheveled love, of amateur pornography, long-haired place, place of manicured lawns, place of unrepaired elevators, place of cream corn, place of unqualified expertise, place of the quick, this mortal place, place of almost, place of everyone’s worst nightmare but your own, place of loss and profit and loss again, place of bleak water, place of deficits, place of contaminant-free topsoil, place of deadfall, place of stillness, place of thin government, place of rampant loneliness, deplorable unceded place, place of discarded cellophane wrappers, place of careless attraction, place of risk, pride of place, place of cheap stainless steel, place of fallen stars and wheat futures, agnostic place, no better place, place of refuge, place of excluded hearts, place of fraught witness, place of those who can laugh and weep at the same time.