Occupation Nation, Last Word – Once

there was a will to get home that same
day; eventually, complications stretched
long into morrow. This peculiar mix of
right now and maybe never before or again
is giving me the heaves at the jump-cuts.

Nevertheless, and not for standing on
ceremony, we should perhaps cling again
to our naked proclivities, let us depend upon
their stout and loyal service, to once more
comport, just as if real juice throbbed in

their stems again, yet and that still with
a head full with beans, or even somewhat less,
some benighted corpulent, one not even
a legume. oi vey, I would say to that, and
there's a rough mix, matey. a particular bad

end. hey I pay rent here, there's the stripe,
here's my chop, if mayhap you don't like it,
feel free, mon, move right along, I won't
say smartly. I try to be fair. It's not what
I'd call an overriding concern, just a cobbed-up

thing to aim at, a target, like beets in a basket,
high atop a pole suggesting, somehow, we are
getting there; that this is the bridge to the
payout, trail to where the air begins to pound,
announcing a space-occupying presence, bearing,

of course, the resident's key and brim-full the vial
of incipient, or is that eminent, liquor of drama.
live virus, jack, wafting up from that thin-tubed
neck to nowhere, its own dreams, complex concoctions
never-laden with concerns such as space and

where does one, so to say, actually, huddle,
hunker down, live, that is, you know, like, hang?
Wouldn't most of that more likely be conducted
just beneath one's hat, or lacking that, more
exactly then, reside right between one's ears?

and that then far more I risk than any simply-
surrounding construction, so seen as more likely
and more properly fit to transport the man, indeed,
the king of kings, the all-seeing eye of the lord?
not less. well, these questions are not so easily

assayed. There's the ayes and the nays, and
let's never forget to lift up sore thanks for our
pensive contemplatives. still, we admit, it exceeds
even the inevitable, we're professionals,
we can feign surprise; it is, after all, even at the

lowest stripe of least, quite incredible, and never
the least bit less than it; year upon year we fail so
at failing, getting nowhere, and not in any time soon,
a sustainable pace, and level of maintenance. and
if the strap starts to slip, then, still,

we keep coming, arriving, bearing the meat.