go fetch
etch me a pail
of love
there's a mighty strong fire of hate blazing
in the hearts of the lost
i'd throw that pail of love
hoping to aid and abet the healing process.
fetch me humans that can live together.
i walk down the endless hospital corridors
on every gurney lies debris of humans who couldn't hear
each other
i stroll across the fractured moon.
the land is very confused when you put your foot down on
it.
do i run left?
do i hide right?
put me in my rocking chair
i'll be old mose from john ford's great film the searchers
he was the guy who survived the comanches
by pretending to be crazy in the head
played wondrously by hank worden
sitting in my rocking chair on the burning front porch
the majorettes parade by
their body armor a trifle thin.
fetch me something edible.
hunger posses me.
better than the devil,i guess.
i'll eat the written law.
it's got a lot of fat on it.
fetch me a home of improvisation.
i'd like to enter my house justified
like peckinpah's steve judd in the beautiful ride the high
country
beautifully rendered by joel mccrea.
fetch me my santa suit and rent something resembling
reindeer.
they expect me to ho ho ho and i'm not sure where i left
my script.
the earth woke up a few hours ago.
did you sleep okay? i had to ask.
fetch me a vacation and a quiet place to burrow.
the city fathers are looking for empathetic mothers.
king kong and godzilla joined the peace corps.
it's a new day, my friend.
i'll help you tote home those groceries.
just keep my sandwich fresh.
when your back gets up
i got this chiropractor part of me
that can smile if you play the right melody.
the earth asked me for a couple of dollars.
i wrote it a poem.
fetch me no more people who feel they need to fetch
the new museum just opened.
nobody's yet decided what kind of a museum it'll be.
it feels fun on the soles
wandering its halls.
the big
adios
put lots of
stamps on your next thought
mail it off to the powers that be
there's work to be done
and not much time left on the clock
the referees all agree just by walking into a room
you ignite controversy
they're willing to cut you some slack
slack didn't want to be cut but in the end he was
persuaded
they gave slack a plate of the big adios
that new recipe that makes you disappear when you eat it
lots of people seem to want to disappear these days
sometimes they get found
not knowing their names or what they supposedly do to make
a living
i watched my neighbor make a living
he took a living to the back bedroom
it didn't matter if a living was already spoken for
he made it sure enough
you could hear the moans of pleasure through the concrete
wall
the powers that be aren't feeling so good these days
they buy their water bottled
but the bottle is sick
when you pick it up to take a drink
it glows in the dark
sometimes things that glow in the dark might be good
you can see how to maneuver the scary trail
beware of sliding rocks and sliding scales
the prevailing wage will never prevail again
unless it gets a blood transfusion.
the cemetery just upped its cover charge.
the big adios asks you to tighten your budget.
smaller portions for one and all.
i think i'll sleep on top of the stride piano
i hear the big game might be blacked out in your
neighborhood
unless you come up with the necessary scratch.
the scratches, both necessary and not so
hang out at the convenience store
talking trash, disrupting the meek and somewhat innocent
who are out trying to mind their own business
a lot of those own businesses have folded
the poker table used to have more players gracing it
there are moth eaten holes in the flag
sometimes it takes a drunk to plant it right
the big adios would like to give you a hug
whisper stories of graphic everything in your ear
it is very aware of your emotional limitations
we all got them
piled up next to the door
it takes some kind of faith to walk outside
as if perhaps you'd never get hit by incoming
sometimes the night goes inside, quiet, graceful
sometimes the night is a mob gone mad
i ask you to share my thermos with me
it'll keep you safe from dehydration
one morning we'll discover just what it is that we're
drinking
it could be benign, maybe malignant
we'll know on the last page of the ongoing story
if only the writer could be a bit more terse
i'll help you unpack your life
tell me where things go
the train has heartburn
but it still pulls out of the station
the journey we make
wears many costumes
and can change dialect at the snap of a finger
my finger almost snapped in half when i gave it
go finger go
i stuck it in the wall socket
just like the instructions demanded
light me up like a christmas tree
i feel like swaggering along the boulevard
the big adios is cranky
it found a scorpion in its tequila
the scorpion was in the witness protection program
it had renounced its poison
About
Scott Wannberg
Scott
Wannberg: living on disability in Florence, Oregon
surrounded by beautiful green trees. once was a member of
the poetry traveling group, the carma bums. try and tap
into the poetic free for all every morning. worked for
years in independent bookstores, most notably dutton's
brentwood. have been published by fellow poet raindog.
believe all is accessible in art and there are no taboos.
scott
Scott's
work first appeared in the
November 2008
Sketchbook
