The Festival of Toast
Dirigibles for Heaven leave on time
each hour from the tower on the shore.
Wing’d people flicker through the flower-towns,
feeding as they fly. Today’s great leader frowns
from a monument of paper to a war
we loved to lose. Electric cowbells chime
in the upland meadows where the tractors mate,
and the voluntary victims of success
commiserate each other on their deaths.
The factory of music gasps short breaths
of song-slag, burnt harmonics, ash of rests;
in the magic square prime numbers propagate.
The incommunicados on the track
race for a prize of silence. Betting’s off,
since the poetry exchange devalued no.
Crimes of misprision reached an all-time low
when the Court gave legal status to a cough.
(the color cops are cracking down on black).
Below the dam the mills grind down the words
pulped from the babbling bark of speaking trees
above the falls. Sophisticates wear wood
over their faces. Nothing’s understood
that can’t be carved. A clutch of wooden keys
locks up the most outspoken of the birds.
On the meatloaf cape our heroines shoot for peace,
assaulted by the honorary poor.
Today, the old red beach is bleeding gold
with deicides, newsmongers, wearers of old
fantastic uniforms. None of the polls are sure
if this battle is a rout, or a release.
So: Heaven’s another fort along the coast,
Gehennah’s full of fish. Sodom and Hell
turn out the tricky parts for guns and gods.
The difference engine levels all the odds:
the cursor always flashes All is well.
And tomorrow is the Festival of Toast.