Waiting For America
Far past Jerry Springer,
Howard Stern
Friends, Just
Shoot Me,
Past the neon promise
Of retail strips
And interstates,
Past the wiggling, teasing
Salesgirl's blipping ad
At www.bytethis.com,
There is an America
Not discovered
Yet. Multimedia dreams stick
In my skull like alien abductions --
Electro-o-vision America,
Plastered-faced celebs
Who can't write or think
Dictate what America
Is, what it should be,
Where it's been
And where it's going.
America
is falling, falling,
With prosperity
And genius. Far beyond
The eight-lane interstate
A cactus dies amid litter.
Somebody is crying tonight,
Somebody is dying but our
Electricity's on and we're high
On voltage, cocaine and egos.
We wait for the Dow to climb
And race toward faster fads
As an unexplainable humming
Consumes everything.
-- Originally
published in the Clark Street Review
(Ray Foreman, publisher)
John Lennon's Still Gone
I.
We waited for John Lennon's encore
And passed time with sex
Between the cracks of fake vinyl.
Beatlemania reappeared in the 90s,
On oldies stations across American airwaves
And John returned, but not good enough --
He was in his twenties again, again and
again.
The marketers liked the clean-faced lovesick
British schoolboy look, not the older,
Enlightened hippy with Yoko Ono.
We wanted Lennon alive, talking
About 50ish rock star sorts of things.
Wearing out the grooves on The White Album
More than two decades ago,
It was time for something new --
Something fresh, familiar, yet unfamiliar:
And if only he'd sing something like:
Everything's all
right,
Yeah, people,
everything's fine.
II.
The old haunts are now haunted with hard
working
Street people in the day while cheating
professionals
Take over downtown streets in the darkness.
We fill up IRAs and 401K's like greedy pack
rats
Looking at age 65 like a long-distance runner
sees
The tape at the last lap's end. Roaming the
country
Looking for Abe Lincoln's America,
Others for Walt Whitman's ghost, some get
rich,
Others get by; some find happiness, others
become
Jaded and faded like the bell bottom blues
Of another friend, not caring and not
carrying.
The me
generation will never be the we
generation.
When the Dow hits 13,000 we'll celebrate,
Then we'll look to 14,000 and want for more
Mortar, sand, sloppy salvation. We'll forget
Giving peace a chance or letting it be.
-- Originally
published in the Clark Street Review
(Ray Foreman, publisher)
Open The Gates, Let's See Who's Next
Tuning into dysfunctional dipshits
On television, some woman that had a vagina,
Then a penis, then a vagina,
Then something that nobody
Knows (when, where or what should be?!)
I feel the catharsis of normalcy
Even though my life
Is one big travesty.
Transvestite lovers screaming and hitting one
another
Makes me feel good, all alone,
In this dark room,
On my own.
Oh, I'm normal,
Look how fucked up they all
are,
These poor welfare people
Who were probably paid
handsomely
By the big TV network
To dress up like some
bizarre ghost,
Act violent and strip off clothes.
Instead of feeding Christians to the lions
We put the poor on TV
And make them roar with hatred,
Swear, kick and hit each other,
All in the name of entertainment.
We can watch them from dark living rooms
In hitherland suburbs
As we fight off office stress
And wind down our insomnia
As we thank God that we
Are not like he or she (or he-she?),
Who knows, but this night time TV
Really fucking glows. . . .
-- Originally
published in the Clark Street Review
(Ray Foreman, publisher)
Sam Vargo has an MA in English (from Youngstown State University in Youngstown,
Ohio, USA) and has worked most of his adult life as a newspaper reporter. He has been a part-time
English instructor at junior colleges and universities in Ohio, West Virginia and Mississippi.
Although he lived almost all of his life in and around Youngstown, Ohio, for the past three years,
he has been a Mississippi resident. He will be embarking on a Master of Arts in Teaching English
program at Jackson State University, starting in summer 2005. He was fiction editor of Pig Iron
Press, Youngstown, Ohio, for 12 years. He has had poetry and fiction appear in the following:
Ascent, The Circle, Clark Street Review, Connecticut Review, The Cynic (an online magazine),
Dandelion, Edifice Wrecked, Electric Acorn, Gypsy Blood Review, Higgensville Reader,
Late Knocking, Licking River Review, Lynx Eye, Mastodon Dentist, The Nocturnal Lyric,
nthposition, Ohio Teachers Write, Poetry Motel, Projected Letters, Red Dancefloor, Reed,
Small Press Review, Subtle Tea, Verve, undergroundwindow.com, Yasse, and other presses
and literary journals.
Email: Sam Vargo
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