Recent poem by my father, featured on the political activist site Counterpunch.org:
Bombs in the Basement
by Gary Lindorff
Today my toast looks like Christ,
like planet earth,
like Venus
like me in a dinosaur-proof suit,
bristling with spikes
that I invented when I was afraid to fall asleep.
But I don’t have time for visions. Christ,
I don’t have time for anything!
Bombs in the basement. That’s for the NSA.
A toast to the NSA!
(Lift up your cups, your mugs, comrades!)
The NSA keeps us mad.
Mad as a Hatter.
Without madness I just start
thinking about whether I flossed last night.
I can’t tell you what I’m really thinking.
But it’s whispering.
(I tell spirit in the stone-people’s lodge, I
sweat out truths that are so far beyond
anything I can put to words.
Sometimes sweat speaks louder than words.)
I wish I trusted my instincts!
Damn this
buzzing in my head. Can’t
think clearly. Want a revolution.
You too?
(My toast wants a revolution!)
I’m a Vietnam peace-veteran. And
so much more. They took my childhood,
my youth, my old age.
(Next life I’m going to
get ‘em back.) They took my father’s soul for
Christ’s sake. . .He was a Marine. . .
But he got it back before he died.
I was there. He got it back!
Bombs, bombs, I mean Buddha
in the basement.
Good morning NSA.
It’s a metaphor, you idiots. You literalists.
It’s code for, you guys should get out more.
This whole piece of toast is looking like Snowden now
who looks like Christ, by the way,
who looks like you and me and Buddha
flossing under the Bodhi tree,
who looks like Snowden.
Dear Snowden,
It snowed yesterday.
And I still have gardens to put to bed. . .
Evan Lindorff-Ellery 