Black Ops

Tex Lester and his sidekick Lumpy Bascom

wiggled down the arroyo on their bellies

to better observe a latifundista trouble spot

too hot to touch so they tap danced instead

Lumpy grabbed the walkie talkie and said

hey my turn to change the channels

Tex said OK Lumpy said here goes

your eyelids are turning transparent

every lock has a key but some are kinda rusty

it was an irreducible problem

on a sliding scale as usual

nothing so precious as a mind

overcoming its own psychosis

nothing so dangerous so revealing

what makes potential seem immediate

who can have infinite protection

working yourself to exhaustion can help

if you are an original sin Catholic

it has been 7 seconds since my last confession

contusions from the infant cradle

held to the sky in blessing

but the fields always droop and wither

and we always have the rest of our lives

the latifundista was under attack

by an army of particulars

bringing the guilty to the book

if they go apoplectic it usually means

there's a turd in the butter dish

at this point grab life by the ass

a balm for the paranoid shakes

or life's analog of the Virgin Mary

offering her writhing body to lepers

entering heaven in her bent Bentley

while the rebels arouse themselves

as her personal representative

no keener mortal praise exists

except by her blind biographers

and their company of war chariots

our task is to mend civilization

without getting our balls shot off

but at my age it's an empty threat

funny you don't see many

geriatric suicide bombers

a relic from grandma's day

where tradition was not the joke

it certainly is today unless it is a

tradition of mockery

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon