Empire of our lapsing lives.
Cradle of every rose's roots and
Silent blanket of our dead.
The essential magnificence of dirt,
Overlooked much in a white-bread world,
Worshiping super-powered sweepers and
Bleach-based,
Cotton-cleansing,
Synthetic syrups
Which corrupt the powers of Sister Soil.
Cleanliness is godliness. . .
So it is hubris.
What is cleaner
Than an atomic bomb?
Cheers to dirt.
Here's to the filthy vibrations of
Deep jazz jams
And twisted, beatronic,
Cerebral steel-scrubbing triumphs
Of The Dragon's Den
and El Oso.
New Orleans finds herself thriving
Upon the grime of the streets,
Abandoned plastic beer mugs strewn across the gutters,
Each a stranded,
Dionysian semaphore
Of the laughter and
Cheap thrills
It provided its lost consumer.
New Orleans cleans herself in the wee hours of the nightmorning,
Garbage men hopping
Up. . .
And down
From gargantuan trucks
Like so many pigeons picking at fried potato-crumbles
For the day's sustenance.
So many pigeons,
Gobbling your casualties of excess.
So many garbage men,
Earning the day's wage to feed their hungry bellies,
And share with the spawn still too young to hop
Up. . .
And down
Off so many trucks like
Wobbling, thriving tribes of pigeons.
It is 5AM and the hose-wielding sidewalk scrubbers proclaim:
"You folks gotta move from these benches - we's fixin' tah hose 'em DOWN."
She screams:
!"I had a husband,
he went and got himself kilt
Last night."!
Well it sure is a tragedy lady
But only so much sense of loss can we feel,
For a filth-brother making his way home to Mother Dirt. . .
At least his mother let him out to breath,
Whether for a marathon,
Or perhaps,
Merely a cakewalk and a catnap.
In Lady Swamp we find dirt and water
Making passionate lovefuck to one another,
Feeding and thriving and rapid birth-death-birth-death,
Giving so much opportunity to the scum-suckers
And grinning-gator-crawlers,
Ensnaring the clumsy beetles falling from slippery palm roots
Into Ms. Swamp's viscous underworld of warm-wet-mouths.
Muddy-roasted espresso shots,
Roasted swirled beets,
And pints of brewmen's latest gift of micro-bred,
Rich, malt-pop
Share the joys of dirt with a fortunate palette,
In the cave beneath a rather-smart mustache.
And never doubt Mother Dirt to
Once slip you back into her arms,
Honoring you with glorious,
Diffused, arrangement among
Pharaohs, soldiers, and daughters so
Gone, gone,
Gone.
But never forgotten. . .
With a humble Ode to Dirt.
