Caldera

(1)
In this life, they throw a switch:
one day you’re living would be,
the next you’re living was.
The manna’s in what’s done.
Thinking? Inhale. Exhale. Yes,
Jules’ history was of breathing.
Ay, carumba! Could he breathe!
While the new world that he wanted
roiled round and round, unchanged.

(2)
Angels always breathe above it all,
let demons build the killing train,
the food no longer running
wild on the western plains,
angels careless to the eating, demons
cooking resurrections on a hot plate,
in a spice that burns down doors.
Angels fly for anyone’s approval,
while devils desire so much more
that damn, if they don’t get it!

(3)
The day they threw the switch,
Jules finally found a poem
is a shove, paper sure caldera.
What had Jules been thinking of?

(4)
We’ll send our boys to war
to keep the oil pipelines ours,
an ours 5,000 miles there.
Heat the ocean into sipping tea.
Kill off all this quirky cosmos
with our shrillest forms of fun.
A culture gone cadaverous,
while he theorized and noted,
got pissed off and roared,
his finest thoughts balletomanes
at the Battle of the Bulge.

(5)
No more. His poems would rise
and punch...elbow their way around!
Yes. Death to stop and think.
As if we must first faint.
First learn to lie down
for hours on the roadside.
"Poets! Face it! Events
vaporize all we try to say!"