MONEY IS A KIND OF POVERTY IN THE SOUP KITCHEN OF YOUR HEART

i am a nation at war with itself. i am a veteran with a beret and a
bad heart and war memorial eyes and life is a kind of death and
peace is a kind of war. peace is a kind of hunger. desire is a kind
of hatred. and i am a cut flower in a blue vase on a tabletop in a
country kitchen. and i admire your hands.

the way you move your hands on the table top. the way you
handle a butcher’s knife. with your tongue like a roasted red
pepper. you with your eyes like garlic cloves. you with your
voice in candlelight making love to the night. like a power plant
makes love to the dead ukraine .

light is a kind of darkness and i am a black bird in the night. and
i am one with the people in your darkness and i am not blind. i
am not blind! i can see what’s what. and you with all the people
on your enemy list. you with your endless armies of young men
to slaughter and to waste.

i am a gospel church on sunday and music is a kind of silence.
i am a nurse in a hospital tent exhausted and no more supplies.
and compassion is a kind of cruelty and silence is complicity and
money is a kind of poverty in the soup kitchen of your heart. and
i am a lentil bean floating in your soup.

George Wallace

 

ZEN OVER ZERO

Dog week later in kitchen pouring
Coffee into my veins with a dull cup
A daze of morals and Moses
Whines and Rosicrucians
It's raining cats and gods
And I am a fine unman

Steven B. Smith