by Ed Sanders

What’s wrong with you!?
Spend the money!
Get the new tech!
Get with it!
Don’t be dull!
Get the latest Blackberry!
And when there’s a new version
in a few months,
throw the old one away!
Get new! Get new!
Your Blackberry isn’t outfitted
to work in Europe too!??
You disadvantaged cad!!
You dullnik!
You frayed-shirt no-shark!
I have no time at all for you!
In fact, I have no time at all!
period.
When a cup of coffee costs $20.00
then we’ll at last find out
who deserves to have energy!!

Of course, what I’m really waiting for is
all of Western Culture to be loaded into a
little dot inside my earring!

Then, I’ll be happy! I’ll be able to rest!

by Ed Sanders

They took a picture of Gandhi’s personal possessions
at the time of his killing
a pair of glasses, a robe, sandals
& maybe a water jar

That was it.

I feel the same way most of the time now
that all my stuff has washed away in the flood
I’m Free of those toilsome burdens
free of my doormouse diaries
free of my kitchen cabinet
& its ancient hippie tea from 1969

but I can’t help it—
I miss my ironing board

and the letters you used to send me
after we were beaten in Selma

Ed Sanders

My father’s development company
built that nice beach house on stilts
for your parents

It washed away in Katrina
but as soon as the Army Corps
gets done rebuilding some off-shore dunes and barriers

(unless those damned neo-socialist swampophiles stop them)

we’re going to snap up your land
and create a bigger and fancier place
with a heliport
and a dog-racing track
for somebody else

I figure my grandson
will develop the next house at that location
in 20 or 30 years

Hell, maybe by then
it’ll need a moon-port.

by Ed Sanders

We partied for five straight days and nights
until the morning
of the smeared ash

I fell upon my flood-scarred knees
by the spot where everything had washed away

I begged the Earth for forgiveness
Beseeched the Sky for lengthened moments
Importuned the Milieu for just a hint of Spirit.

And then somehow I felt a flow of bliss
it only lasted for 30 minutes,
but I knew it would come again

again again again
on the day of the ashen skin above the lids

when my aluminum boat
would no longer have to be used
even among the Spirits

and my children would always believe in their
daddy and mommy and the Egyptian Sun Boat
would always transverse the water to escape the Snake

Seven Wednesdays & then the third day when
the two sad Marys once came to the
cave of the rolling rock.

No matter how much we gambled
demanded the women pull up their dresses
drank absinthe and sprayed gold paint on our dongs

the fingers of those forty days
of penance and charity
still ran themselves within where we think
—the place where our grandmothers were sure eternity sang

and now where we’ll be alone in the fullest commixture
of everything that ever was in the Ever