The Land of God & Cannon

With nothing but a compass in Concord, Mass,
I landed at the Milldam cobblestone street square,
head aching, ancien' General Gage on my tail,
too much God & cannon coming up the road,
I scribbled a few now-forgotten notes
and moved into the spoiled woods of fabled Walden.
I made a roommate Of Henry David Thoreau.

Now Plymouth Rock leads to
a bloodline of highways with no horizon,
A string of tree-lined tunnels, dirty snow,
Beer cans and cigarette butts
sans a sniff of smoke for a soul.

The cool clear impossible place of my desire
Became my jumbled and jumpy New Jerusalem
of steel and stone. The pond was surveyed and sold.
Henry David, he became a bit of a bore,
What's worse, he snored. Now he's a new shoe style,
Sturdy and rubbery and oh so multi-dysfunctional,
All sold over the electronic Web of Life
via a mass major national megastore
From sea to shining shore.

So I moved West, following the tattered map:
Where the Tasty Freeze is going to be,
Next to soon-to-be the Banco de Mythappropria,
Next to the next nouveau salon of old Saint Lou
And Noah's last unnamed flying monkey of Ozone
is fat and happy in the yet-to-be named municipal zoo.

Still I trudged, and entered a golden stolen Anasazi ruin
Of sun-baked clay, jade, rubble, a chimney for a tomb,
a below-ground tunnel temple to the last great escape
for threadbare me, impossible though rational you.

Somebody, some angel, fell right off the map,
And left me here to consider both an arc of light
& the fly-shit tempest of a teapot domed scandal.
They left no other marker, but a megalith, pointing up.
My compass spun wildly, and the wind swirled up a scare.

And now we pass through a narrow port.
See the signs in the synchronistic stitching,
The seeds of the new in the decay of the world.
Can you hear the slow steady rumble
of tumble and dry and decadent dreamtime?
God's washing machine is working overtime.

From Concord to discord … eventually …
Ah, I know this much: There's no such thing.
There's a long-running song on an ever-running string.
All ripples, known or unknown, will eventually still.
I moved further up the hill, following a wire.
The wire led to a hook, and the hook led
To a phone. But the line was dead.

Finally, I thought: Paradise, silence.
This last great emptiness is my consolation,
This last dime I spend, a mere donation in a dollar nation.