DON KINGFISHER CAMPBELL
STOP WORRYING
a poetic half libretto
Stop Worrying
Major King Kong
rides on top of
the falling bomb
And everyone is
laughing
as he whoops down
to the doomed city
If only nuclear
weapons
could be just as
gay
we'd all sleep
easily
Dreaming of daisies
popping up in
fields
not representing
humans
With muddy water
flowing
through green
swamps
bubbling life for
tadpoles
But what about the
streets
laden with belching
vehicles
and factories
shipping direct
Are the
cholesterolated beings
worth saving for
all that labor
inside stapled
cardboard boxes
Maybe this design
is designed
to fail, be
overtaken by breathing
trees and overgrown
oceans
Where the Road Ends
A metal yellow
diamond stands sentinel
Marker to
conclusion of asphalt and culture
As fierce clouds
shine over dark grassy hill
Walk into abundant
wildness and see
Blue sky heat eat
away clouds while
Purple thistle
joyously overtake hillside
An oak tree cluster
is familial brilliant
Green clumps
welcoming sun and gravity
To almost reach
slopes that roll and stretch
Unhindered by wire
or building or car
Only footsteps and
eyes should touch this
Grown beauty which
still exists before
Civilization's
beyond be again encroached
Whereout lie
concrete interests of mere men
Human Minds
A world without
the bomb
Now wouldn't that
be something
Maybe then we'd
get rid of the
rockets
and missiles too
But it would take
the removal of
rifles
and guns
To produce
a fundamental
return
Back to swords
and knives
Unless an alien
came
to melt it all down
Hell, you know
we'd rise up
Stones and sticks
in our hands
Even sans trees
fists would still
over rule
Taking away bodies
would leave only
worlds behind
For the universe
to merrily drift
out of existence
In the World War
III Museum
Piles of
melted steel, rubbled bricks, and scattered wood shards to walk around for
hours
Shells of ships, planes, trucks, and cars to gaze at from an uncomfortable short distance
Shadows of humans, dogs, cats, even mice to be observed on walls and floors so close you can almost touch them
Videos of world leaders in disagreement, of people segregated in differently named countries and neighborhoods in this bunker
Finally, mounds of cooked hair, scrapings of charred flesh, and chunks of fragmented bones as evidence we were all the same
Vietnam
numbers on the TV
screen
wounded in the
hundreds
sometimes thousand
and
dead always double
digit
newsman in a simple
suit
with frank reynolds
hair
small square
picture
in the background
of green
uniforms
with one hand
clutching chest
blood
like ketchup in the
movies
and I was young
maybe 8 or 9
when I first
noticed
people holding
signs at
the federal
building
finally making the
connection
the suited man
giving the news
the soldiers dying
on their backs
and me in the
living room
with my parents at
night
looking at
magazines the fan on
shadows saying
nothing
Green Bell Apples
vs Dreadful Toenail Assholes
I want to write a
poem about clipping one's toenails
That's my idea: to
start with something dreadful
But then I think of
what is even worse: assholes
And realize I need
a pleasant counterbalance, like apples
A universally loved
fruit, historically important, red or green
This contrasts
wonderfully, causes my brain to ring like a bell
I decide I'll try
to get every word to sound like a bell
For example, I dig
the noise made by each clip of toenails
It's good to cut
them, it's like eating something green
Which results in
fine digestion, a subject considerably dreadful
To some, until you
remind them that it is grown apples
Chewed and
swallowed that help to unplug stopped assholes
You definitely want
to keep doctors away from assholes
When they get a
hold of you, you reverberate inside like a bell
Thus a diet of the
good stuff is essential, like mature apples
And bananas and
oatmeal and gelatin for your toenails
I hear it comes
from animal fat--how nauseatingly dreadful
To
contemplate--I've got to shift theme: a tree is green
That's better, our
world is mostly filled with glorious green
Trees and bushes
and grasses and hopefully not just assholes
That would be
unpleasant, right? Another notion dreadful
Like oil slicks and
car exhaust and stock traders clanging a bell
To signal the start
of trading--there's a concept without visible toenails
How do we get back
to nature in this concrete land of few apples
By focusing some
time on what gives us a quality of living like apples
And take an
afternoon off to walk in a park or wilderness that's green
A place where one
can remove one's shoes, expose them toenails
Maybe even find a
lonely spot to excrete onto dirt from assholes
Like design
intended, remember we discovered how to cast a bell
Forge furnaces,
direct sewage through corrugated pipes so dreadful
And what about us,
the modernized people who've become dreadful
With our loud
stereos, air conditioning, paper waste, prepackaged apples
Filling landfills
and stopping up rivers--we need a real warning bell
To toll in our
heads to call us to ponder again the value of green
Instead we drive
and fly our cyberspaced opinions like assholes
Everybody's got a
justification, but what about freeing those toenails
Yes, it's all down
to toenails freedom or leather shoes dreadful
When it's the
assholes that rule, we diminish the number of apples
So go for the green
life and make your own cause a cleansing bell
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