Cinematica
             
Americans walk into movie theaters with their 4 year old sons,
buy large popcorns, five dollar boxes of Whoopers,
then find their seats and die.
When they walk out two hours later
they are still dead
but get into Ford Explorers anyway
and turn the key.
The gas gauge reads full
but they stop at fillings station and fill up.
If they are near the supermarket
they back into the front door
and load up the trunk with red meat
and Kool Aid.
Even if they are in possession of no money,
they spend money
on large containers of beef jerky.
There's nothing in there
even before they've snacked
and they go home to sit on the couch
and die.
They're already dead.
I know.
I've joined them in my television set
with the ambulances on every channel.
They drone on in a hyper red light madness.
It doesn't matter,
we've slowed down our death
to make it feel like living.
Some people ride their lawn mowers to the factory,
put in an honest day of work
then go home to smack the dog.
Others smash their skulls against freeway fast computers
and snarl at the blood.
Most of us sit in our cars on parkways
and spit into the Plexi-glass of our gas masks.
The wolves outside our windows have beautiful teeth
and against the din of talk radio,
they are alive like rainbows and furious thunderclaps
that rain down on Nebraska in August.
Don't fool yourself.
Nebraskans are dead too.
And people from Florida,
the skinny ones out on Long Island,
the kids.
My death is a guy I hire
to plow the driveway
when snow comes.
He's dead too
though he wears manly boots made in America
that make him look like John Wayne.
Wayne's the one that killed us, or maybe it was Abe
Lincoln, better yet,
Ferdinand and his witch wife, Isabel.
That's the great accomplishment,
the lineage—
Jew hating Spaniards,
to a 4 year old kid with a package of Starbursts
bigger than any tree he'll ever climb
and asthma.
It makes his dad obese
but he's dead,
so what's a couple of more Raisinets for the finalé;
a few more gun toting celluloid zombies
who stare down at us
in our sugar stained seats
and laugh and shoot
and then pee in their pants from laughing.