the faces at the bar just want the news

music is playing
some old sentimental country tune
“she left him” “he left her” whatever the hell it was

3am stumbling from his seat to the bathroom
Jack is counting his change
that’s all he’s got left

after The Company raped his land
giant superweeds are all Jack’s got left

he had to buy new seeds every year from Monsanto

(and when The Man found Jack had accidentally used Roundup Ready seeds without paying for them he sued Jack)

3am stumbling back to his seat at the bar
Jack still doesn’t know what hit him

the tune keeps playing
“he left her” “she left him” whatever the hell it was

the faces at the bar are watching the news replay
another drone attack
baby diapers
restless legs
neutralize stomach acid
invisible makeup
GE, Pfizer, Glaxo, Syngenta

“he left her” “she left him” whatever the hell it was

one drunk at the end of the bar says “it’s a strange night”
everybody stops and listens

they don’t know it but they’re hearing a giant wave of poison coming out of St. Louis
towering above
the plains

So deep, so blue the night

Jack holds up his hands
and says
“my family was on this land for a hundred years
and now the lights go off
I fell for their pitch
they took me to the cleaners”

the bartender says, “yeah, well, my ass hurts”
and everybody starts laughing
they laugh
&laugh
tears roll down their cheeks
they pound their heads on the bar
they fall off their stools
they roll on the floor
they’re yelling and picking up chairs and throwing them

and now a big-time pol comes on the news and says

“we’re all in this together”

“he left her” “she left him” whatever the hell it was

who are the soldiers who go out into the fields of America and Africa and Asia
and South America to push food
changed forever
into the mouths of wasting humans

the bar quiets down again

pockets empty
Jack walks out into the rain
and moves along the road
under the sky
and begins to stride
his pulse picks up

more than human and less than human on the earth

Vaccine Woman

there was no way to deny it or get around it
her little boy started screaming after the shot
and then 2 days later
the world shut down

he sat in a corner
he lay in his bed
he didn’t speak

the doctor huffed and puffed in back of his steady blank eyes
he assured her this had nothing to do with the shot
it was a predisposition or a genetic trait or a precondition

he smiled now and then
he said autism could have emerged on its own just after the shot was given
as if the universe rearranged itself
at that moment

she saw she was talking to a psychopath
he had been a machine for a long long time

she went into the darkness and pled her case before a government committee
they sat like ancient high priests
and listened and glanced at documents
and when they had permitted her the allotted time they handed down their judgment:

no

she went home and took her boy in her arms
he was still
he didn’t look at her
he didn’t speak

she consulted a lawyer
who told her
the manufacturer was protected by an iron wall
he would continue to make the vaccine and sell it
and pocket billions

the long night was closing in
the storm was here
the silent boy was sitting in its eye

rage was burning in the middle of her chest

a rage the public would see as insanity

from a distance, the moon and the stars might know
what was going on
but people in their everyday straitjackets
would lash out at her
because they needed a target
they needed to ridicule a defector from their own slave-shuffle

they obeyed all the small print
they were neutered in their cores
paralytics

but she wields
the two-edged sword in the empire

that cuts away the web
and comes to the spider

no matter what defamation
the intermediary whores
lay at her door

lady liberty, liberty from the living death…Vaccine Woman

She and her family are pre-civilization, civilization, and

Post-civilization

And she will go to the ends of the earth

To bare the innards of the crime

Her enemies will never know

What it means to have her mission, her eternal mission

But she knows

Vaccine Woman

Love in her breast for her own is one answer

Justice is the other

She has a two-edged sword in the Empire

That cuts through the web

And comes to the spider

Vaccine Woman…