A Work in Progress

Homogenized, pasteurized, plagiarized.
An A-Frame home on Howard's Hill
Where the houses sprout like cauliflower
And the tributaries flow towards route 6 at 4.
The families there watch TNT and CNN.

My grandfather kept a journal
Of the news and weather
Everyday forever until 1997.
Leather bound like his hands,
And stained as the thigh of his trousers.
God made no Kalaskanov in the margins
During the first gulf war.

A sweaty, balding turtle man
Sitting in a desk made of glue and hamster chips
Telling me the white cars in Pittsburgh
Turn orange on the North Side.
Where the three rivers converge
He hacks up indifferently
You'd best not drive a Volkswagen.

A man whose latest book I read tomorrow
Grew corn in a stolen squeaky shopping cart.
The virgin stalks bent like St. Louis
As they squeaked through the streets of Chicago,
Stopping at every corner side bodega.
The foreign tongues faded and were drowned,
By the flapping wings of a Giant Eagle.