ode to a shadowed America

Fulfilling a "Fight Club" fantasy,
log-splitter Lincoln doffs his silk-lined top-hat
to suit-up and duke it out with ten-eyed "Evil Vile Corrupt"
as Daniel Johnston referees
in jail-bird pajamas
taking hits from both Honest Abe
and his aristocratic adversary,
who nonetheless boxes with arsenic-dusted gloves
over scaly-green phalanges
as three spare eyes hypnotize the whistled-bard
and plans his coming game of cards,
all as tall-skinny Abe lands tame left-hooks angling
for a liver-shot with gristle-grit
and a jaw built of iron melted
for his new trans-continental bullet-train

But under the stars and bars,
"Evil Vile Corrupt" is no depressive aesthete,
but rather an alien Ali
fast as a hornet and sweet as a bee,
content to batter referee and adversary alike
round after round, year after year,
revived by black Gatorade
and enraged with minotaur-like rebel fear
borrowed from African warriors
flayed for missed cotton quotas
and stolen water-melons

Finally, after ten stone-wall rounds
of padded-cannon pounding and Napoleonic theatrics,
the shell-shocked contenders
limp to their corners
to await the decision as the luminary lunatic
confers with Saint Peter and the other judges
cherry-picked by Northern partisans

After tense moments
filled by the choral howling of coaches and crowd,
Daniel moves in like a lion
and lifts up the red Presidential glove
before screeching his whistle-pistol
through Abe's cynical armour
dropping the victorious giant with Bondian cool
as the British section listens rapt
to the dying demi-gods last Macbethian utterance,
and tough press-men scribble
down a needle-fix against Tamerlane

Two centuries later,
give or take,
the epic match's loser
is on the make in Iceland,
planting oil-fracking robots
around the mermaid-teeming coast-line,
selling these blue sea-pagans
steel spears and kryptonite-nets
for pure pearls
and buckets of slippery-finned silver snacks

Meanwhile, brave President Kennedy
forever rides his ghost-motorcade
down the black-and-white Dallas boulevard,
glowing with that rare, manly-manic charisma...
waving with that debonair devil-may-care smile
like the flags flanking his archaic bosh-class auto
as it perpetually passes
between the parade-teeth of mortality...
although his mega-soul was death-prepped
by many opioid-eased swims
beside naked yay-yay nymphs
discussing democracy, Cuban cigar diplomacy,
the eros of pathos, and
of course "Michelangelo."

They "come and go" till spent,
he'd retire to his White-House infirmary
to galvanize America's millions to jog
black-tracks bathed in space-sweat,
finishing the first laps of our long moon-bound marathon,
even as his doctors and generals
battled Addison's affliction, Keat's addiction,
and early onset Demontia displaying symptoms
of grand Jacksonian war-anemia,
coupled with rare catatonic comas
passed off as colds
to the too credent press-corps
as Cadeavour Jack wrote
his own scripts for oxis and steroids
to scare the Kremlin bully-bear
clowning below Zhivago's poem-encrusted crown,
sullied by Stalin's long and sinister stint
as biggest brother swilling blood and vodka indifferently,
as Lenin's sweet revolution slipped
into the animalism of ghoulag-death-farms
and anti-American animus
lit by the hot DemoCrassus tongue
of Senator McCarthy
as he sagely mentored Nixon and his future minions,
even though they slipped off afterward
to sip martinis and discreetly
mock G.I. Joe's secret sperm-swapping ways
and his "S.A. gay" red-bloodied imperial flag
they each hungered to inherit

Fast-forward past Watergate and Perostroika,
play again as Tricky Dick
is on every satellite channel
given a regal hero's funeral.
The military-industrial complex
is now quaint old hat
replaced by the million-tentacled Tesseract.
The skeleton of the commerce-clause
is safely locked in a safe-deposit closet
along with "the bill of rights."
Yet our Illiad isn't done
but "mid-way"
cave-stalled on The Cyclops' Island...
soon to sail again
a few good men short

Still, Captain America:
where are you now
in this our shadowy hour of affluent bondage?
If you get this s.o.s.,
send to Calcutta for The Hulk,
enlist the Tesseract
against herself so
she might survive
the next revolution...
we need her after all.
Send to Europe
for the refugees;
Liberty herself is on her knees
praying to Molloch
for a Gallic victory
or an asiatic breeze to carry
Snowden and Assange
to symbolic "safe asylum"

Me, I'm numb
like last war's drum:
self-drugged and werewolf dumb.
Please,
open "the Doors of perception"
and let me in...
or else send cyanide
to let me off this devil's ride.
Also mail "complete works of Ginsberg,"
"a catcher in the rye,"
and whatever tomes catch
your eye.

For bards and scribes,
the war is now...
but in time
hard war comes anyhow.
Alarms will sound in every town
and fleet Revere will ride again,
as millions rise
and millions die on yankee turf
and far-off surf,
where myriad tribes will
our shadowed fate decide.
And Yankee stars
must fall and die,
just as Odin in fairness asks
a vengeful equal eye

Only such a price
will lasting freedom buy