PROLOG

Smooth, quick runway, prompt vomiting
of the dinner flight from "El A Equi,"
dark ramps, sparse migrations through the Stapleton
pre-corrupt Hall of Peña DIA
midcontinent mid-brain aerodrome
of the 50 colonies of the States United,

10:50 PM Mountain time. Deflation severe -
almost the aesthetic equivalent of the bends; mucho,
hugely diminished lights, the whole pizzaz
of electronic pretense cranked down
to enablement, enough by which to get home.

Topping the green belt ridge (except for a shack or two
and a confused dog in the distance, a golfer, a nutzo wideboy,
fresh from a spontaneous murder in Louisville--
pronounced Loois vill--there is not the slightest
stir of a single solitary blade of prairie grass.)

Back to Bold Boudoir, from a closely packed,
long weekend in Hollywood. It is a big lowering of the tone--
so strong that all one's reserves, stored up over a lifetime,
spill out into the general flood of the wettest season
the heartland has seen since the last glaciation.

After consorting with Heidi, if only in the public print,
Bold Boudoir's intolerable clash and sweat of bicycle wars
can't come close to Babylon - in fact, nothing comes close
to Babylon and the view of the Strip and le Chateau Marmot
from the Hillside eyrie of Juan Diario, where we stayed.

AWFUL RUMORS

Rough, Bad-landing comments, unrested travellers.
pisst-off, unrequited smokers, possible flat tire,
maybe broken wheel, trashed toilet, frazzled stewardesses,
possibly drunk pilot, potential Pope-hordes on the runway
projecting bloody Denver Sandwiches in the outwash.

Terrible whispers and insinuations that the swarms
arriving in Denland to do obeisance to Juan Pablo Dos
shall turn the aerodrome into a swamp of what the LA Times,
calls {the journal is in my hand} the most privileged
and wealthy children in the world.

¿Was this to be the biggest instance of Drive-by capitalism
in the history of el Mundo? The hubristic display of Military
might - Air Force Uno, Papa's immensely vulgar 747 and
the hatches of Hercules Copters (strangely pagan intrusion that)
took one mentally back to Rome and its classic triumphs.

The Cycloptic screen was saturated with such Denland images--
one wept for the overbearing mediocrity
and the debased post-modernism of its runway exposé.
Was there no relief from this crass, materialistic leering
in the face of all humankind, even in the face of judgement itself?

While our parked and resentful flight cooked in its holding pattern
my phased head bent, and imagined the Pope skimming
across the green Atlantic in a galleon rowed by slaves
whipped on by jewel enturbined eunochs through foamy waves,
then went traversing stark white caribbean archipelagoes.

And putting briefly into New Orleans to re-supply,
the slaves pull against the Mississippi so the Monarch of Rome
can survey the wretched waste and destruction wrought lately
by the Father of Waters--to whom Papa can surely relate
coming out from a patriarchal metaphor his ownself.

Passing by Baton Rouge and the chemical effluviants
which puke forth from its petro-chemo-agro-bio-apocalypto calypso,
Papa holds a finely embroidered handkerchief
of the finest Egyptian cotton against his famous nose.
But it avails him nought--
nothing on this corrupted earth can staunch this stench.

Yet still up the great river the galleon plies past Memphis
where he sees on shore what appear to be Nubians swaying to Jazz
and ranks of Elvis-like guitar players sweating and grinding
under the Southern sun--and then the rowers pull past Cairo
and Papa dabs the egyptian cotton hanky on his brow, confused.

And alarmed because he knows this is the wrong order
and the wrong direction and possibly the wrong continent
for the succession of those great cities...Ah, Illinois, the great French
colony, His Holiness nods, after the prompting by the Grand Eunoch,
whose jewel encrusted armbands flash under the Huck Finn sun.

THE GREAT MUDDY,

Now the galleon begins to roll and pitch as it comes into
the outfluence of the confluence of the greatest tributary
in the known world, the Missouri, boiling with the mud of half
a continent, bristling with the uprooted riverbottom forests and
the agro-trash of Kansas and Nebraska and slack-water Dakota.

Entering the turbulence, the new river takes the Pope west
toward his destination in Denland, and further to witness
the devistation of human works, but more to take in the vast
hydraulic surge from the source to which he is headed
and even destined, to contemplate the Lord's cold indifference.

This would be the compliment of a "drive-by"--a float-by
invaluable to the preparation of the soon to be delivered encyclycle--
but just then the Pope espies across the muddy waters the ghost
of Dan'l Boone standing at the confluence of the Osage
the dim outline of a hexagonal long rifle in his knarly hands.

Ah, the Pope whispers, there's that crazy old smoke-
from-the-nearest-chimney unregenerate, unrepentant, out-of-control,
off-the-books, blazin'-the-trail-to-the-outlands dissenter--
he won't be going to Denland. In Denland they have never heard
of this coyote--they think he owns Boone Farm Wines.
He's outa my Encyclicle...

UP THE PLATTE

The Platte is flat. A silty river with wide meanders and bars.
Only in a season of such flood could a galleon transcend it--
in the migrations the galleons were on wheels, the conestogas, pulled,
by the Horses of Desperation lashed by land fever. But now
the slaves pull toward the South Fork of the River Platte,
the branch ascending to Denland.

The Pope can now observe the beeves whose protein chains
are more enchained than his galley-slaves, and which so enhance
the dominance of the Haves over the Have Nots and which can scarcely be
distinguished from the fabulous steroidals who make up
that Crown of Meat which is the University of Nebraska football team.

Yea, Nebraska, laid out like a side of beef, a lesson
not to be missed by such an emissary from the Old Empire and of course
still the empire of law and record in post-pagan Europe--
the subcontinent, par excellence, of class and taste, and compared
to its engineered social unrest, America is still the freshest ingenue.

THE FINAL APPROACH TO DENLAND

Up the long arm of the South Fork of the Great Platte
the galleon plys against the sluggish current of the increasing
urbo-corruption and agro-pollution. It's a good thing the Pope's
provisions include a plentitude of Pelegrino Water. We won't ask
what stupendous fee was paid for shipping that label aboard.

But the provisioners weren't so ready with the gas masks.
The Grand Galleoneer should have forseen the vapors
rising thicker than on the River Styx
from the Great Territorial Conoco Refinery.
The Pope's fine egyptian cotton was going to be thin stuff here--
Commerce City, Sulphur incarnate, hope blasted,
the Devil in the bones.

But the Pope's miracle account gets his party and his escort
through it, so we come to the confluence with Cherry Creek
and stand in it. Afloat? No. At this point the slaves carry the barque,
so shallow has the trip become. We'll not go into the Encyclical.
Suffice it to say, they don't write like they used to. Appeals to behave?

Still, it's better than a Boring Seven Forty-Seven. And
it's a better rendezvous with the President of Norte America.
It might be better than anything in the foreseeable future.
So put on a skullcap, and a goldplated cross
and hold the text close. The crowd is vast,
and young, and unaborted. !And they're all pregnant!

MONTANA & MONTANER

Big wind, big clouds
Big grass, big rain
Big Road--big load
Big railroad, big caboose

Elk jerky, deer jerky
Jerky de Moose

Big summer real-estate
Long winter outa state
Long water, deep wader
Big Mountain, Big Skiers
Downhill and loose

Deer jerky, elk jerky
Jerky de moose

Designer ranch in the hills
Not far from Big Timber
Incipient and authentic teepeers
Almost the Berserkers
Hook ups, Modern caboose

Cow jerky, turkey jerky
Jerky de goose

Air streamers, day dreamers
Schemers and land jobbers
New age camp robbers
Headed for the calaboose

Elk jerky, antelope jerky
Jerky de moose

Wapiti jerky, prairie dog jerky
Jerky de moose.

Travel all day, still Montana
Get to Livingston I presume
The County Market and Gil's got it
Gil can keep it--too obtuse

Trout jerky, salmon smokie
Jerky de moose.

Big Militias, pas delicious
Noxon suspicious
Over past Missoula, up above
Flathead, some of `em dead
Called to their last tattoos

Llama jerky, guinea-hen jerky
Jerky de papoose

Big government, jerky extreme
Sharpshooter waste the dog
Shoot the mama in the door
Baby fall to the floor
Skillethandle Idaho--Megabuse

Apaloosa jerky, sugarbeet jerky
Jerky de cayoose

Militia Man, Boze Man
Eyes on Ruby Ridge
Randy Weaver, ATF goons
Firepower the federal noose

Rainbow jerky, rattlesnake jerky
Jerky de mongoose

Roulette jerky, sucker jerky
Jerky de puke

Good Dog, caretaker Dog
"Drivin' the Boss's Car"
(Hey! Ted or Jane in thar?)
Take'n a chance on a buffalo ranch

Beefalo jerky, merger jerky
Jerky de romance

Big oil, little oil
Stripper wells, swell strippers
Billings motel, bar fights from hell
Think I'll pack off to Jordan

Red pepper jerky,
Don't-tread-on-me-jerky--
Jerky de beg yer pardon.