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The Myth of the Salt Lick

In prehistoric times there was balance.
Bedrooms were charming and restful
animals would travel for miles
to be blinded by the beauty of the dawn.

But continued rainfall over the centuries washed this away
from the soil into streams, from streams into rivers
from rivers it was scattered to the sea. All animals
have developed a craving for something to replace this deficiency.
Helmeted men walk the ocean floor, searching.

I wish you luck, gentleman,
but will see you only as far as the gate.
This is no harmless mineral.


 

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Refined and Processed Modern Food Produces Many Backward Children

At this very second, roll your head round and round—
do you hear the grating, grinding sound?
Twigs underfoot, pebbles in a stream settling.
The crackle of a campfire on a lonely starlit night
me and Silver, deuces wild.

Some people cannot close their fists.
Toxic crystals press on their nerves
the agony on their faces, the accumulations in their hearts.
Stand on any street corner and watch the average person hobble along
ham, bacon, eggs, hot cakes, doughnuts, toast, jelly, marmalade,
sweet rolls, fried potatoes, waffles, pork sausage, coffee,
years and years of wrong, poisons created in our daily living
creeping into the wrists and fingers.

As a child, I had two invisible friends
Fat Man and Little Boy.
We would go to the soda bar
put on a record, do the Bug
it was like red hot water
passing through me.


 

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False Notions

What I did to my thin sister
was a song, a hog’s snout
was incidental to life.
If she picked up a pencil to write, she trembled.
For that I am sorry.

But there is a density, a specific gravity in the new flesh
not yet tabulated, a strange laying down
of uninsulated wires underground:
Seven hundred miles (unbelievable, but true)
of fine tubes for every cubic inch of fat.

There is no Law of Compensation.
Eggs are not lovingly returned to the hens.
Try swimming to the bottom of the brown river,
against the current, digging in the mud
to find the ring.
You can then starve to death
on a full stomach.

I don’t believe in forcing Nature.
Take it in your hand
and make a powder of it.