Spirit Chain Gang

you can't buck the system but i can't help but notice the formality east of the mississippi

having been gone a long time it seems parochial and authority-aggrandizing

but as i say you can observe but you're not going to pitch a complaint in the cradle of civilization

but if you do you're going to come out looking like a freak in your jeep and your meadow hoppers

today we saw a long skinny fox like a cross between a cat and a chihuahua

it bounded to the middle of a fresh-mown field and rolled in the grass and scratched its ticks

it was in no hurry at all about getting to the tree line and didn't seem to mind as long as we kept our distance 

it probably helped that we were the only other pairs of eyes in the park grounds

unless the giant owl we'd seen swoop through there the day before was peering from one of the oaks

it's a shame the animals finally get to come out in the sun and they're miserable with insects

they cycle through their generations ground up and given life again and again with similar results

except that kids these days seem to see themselves as the frayed end of a dna line

but i guess when we were young we also saw ourselves as a sort of final iteration

so you see what i mean the dump truck keeps on spinning out sludge that's so hard to crawl out of

that you're never even sure if it's stupid to have kids in a crazy world you're unequipped for

but the population of the world keeps increasing because fucking is just part of nature

but you cross the river and you can say that sex is part of a duty-chain for god and country

and no fences between the houses is supposed to help you keep each other honest

is someone coming to your door for sex and is that sex going to contribute in any way to society

will it be followed by sacrificial and largely performative outlays of cash for merchandise

not for yourself of course but for the kids the growing family scrawling out a tribe line

every wild spirit gets sucked up into a chain gang called Spirit Chain Gang but 

the wild spirit is only in the songs they sing to get the work done faster and more efficiently

and the ones that get away get eaten up by the parasites that once were culled by bats and rain

Zaul Eikensej