uranium rattlesnake whiskeywhatever morris has lying aroundhe loads into his army issue surplus duffelhe tosses into the backseatof his used sedanand lurches across interstate 80away from cheyennethe way a foil balloon plucksat the leash of a power linewhen the high winds move off the great basinAM band finds the vein, trudgespast the jangle of red bull and tramadolas open sky squeezesblack loam into spears of chartreuseand somewhere betweenlincoln and omahathe redolent cirrostratus ofcafo lagoon ammoniarouses morris froma reverie-buckled no placenested somewhere in the abyssalundulature, too molten for mythwifi out of rangestepping over tetrapodson his way into des moinesthe manifesto won’t write itselfnearly finished as it may bewith a chapter or twoto gomorris dictates whateverthe despotic goddess of the interstatedecreesin turgid dialectand clumsy braidnecessary tongues when thetemple priests quarrel overtrue northand bach sells suvsto the reserve army of thetemporary in-betweenthe independent on-demandthe just-in-time by designseems like the only thing workingis the whiskeywhich morris drainsas interstate 35 deposits kansas cityas so much accumulationnot far from where the fatherwas born and diedand in betweendrove a wonder bread truckuntil the postmodern poetspoisoned the welland took everythingbut the crustsbut by thenmorris had fledwest west west
one last solemndraughtand first principles begin tosing, a hermeneutics forthe infinite interregnumin verse: a kettle of vulturespurling near the shoulderhorizons punctured by the sputterof cell towers and gadsden flagsand in the passing blear ofbillboards and bumper stickersclearly, morris receivesthe final commandments
under an illinois sky turningtuxedo and blanching the yellowedmanifesto pages in thepassenger seatthat steam in theneon of rest stopsand megachurcheson the edges of envelopesof overdue utility billsand in the margins ofthe road to serfdommorris scrawls a marginaliathat begets a marginaliathat shapes empty space
too much puh puh puhnot enough putschbitch didn’t get dressed up for nothin’pissing into plasticon daniel boone expresswayracing the artichoke green floretsof agricultural runoffin the ohio riverthe mother appears, unbilledin the halos of passing big rigsfreed from the tyranny ofsmall embarrassmentsand black lungto jostle withthe despotessin her bakelite mozzettaunable to slurry the feverroiling the peasant fromcheyenne
no cracked lips to steam inbone broth or ice cubes tochew, no blackpepper in the soles ofmorris’ socksonly sheets of cold mistdrawing back into thecroaking growth of oak andhickory and ontocharlestonthen beckley and lewisburgwith the AM band cranked tohuffing dust-offand spores from message boardsfogging up the windowswith nothing to see anywaybut the skulls of the blueridge mountains fillingthe hollers like so manybeheaded counterrevolutionaries
heading east east eastas interstate 64heaves the used sedan onto 95and with it, a self-similarand contagious tidalsurging northward towardsthe capital beltwaycalving mile marker bymile marker into arictus of incompatible partsso cacophonous thedrowning out becomes the wholepoint, the truth a thingto assemble as we gothe motor ofhistory a house of mirrorssloshing of plundered paganismsand populist platitudesthe immiscible volumefinding its containerin morrisin ten thousand wordsin a 2-ply manifesto forthe breaking insurgencybeseeching his followers toto make brick andburn them throughly
brandish your torchesprint your single-shot liberator pistolsgrab whatever you have lying arounduranium rattlesnake whiskeyno sense making sense of thingsno cents worth the zinc they’reissued onno i in peasant
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