Notes from a Generation #3

They tore it down i guess

it was

73 maybe

Or 4 - don’t know for sure

 I was only a boy then

and hadn’t yet learned to

scratch out life

in these deep etched years.

But 

America

was big in those days -

Grown-full with herself and

 propped up there

 fresh on the worldhead like an        

                    Iron Crown -

 Big enough she could take                      GodSteps

 backwards and

from the shallow end of

Nothing

 clear a live earth     to a dead moon

in

      OneGreatLeap

That’s why I’d say -

If i had to give some account of it

Why they’d have rubbed it out from skyline entirely  

without so much as a

streetlamp or hitching post left

to say it was there -

As though the town itself had been

born directly to that

slate-grey drab modernity -

Born and then served back

to itself

in hard blank cubes  -

Because everything back then

American

had to be as big as the

idea of itself -

Everything charged through 

with our own 

arrogance 

In that sense 

you could say it was a matter 

of destiny -

that the very nature of our

national identity

would’ve

 necessitated the need to 

wipe the old world 

out clean 

to make way for the

 NewComingBIG -

The Big industry

The Big bombs

The Big cars -

 Even the towns couldn’t 

bare the thought of 

small 

    especially the small ones -

 and the smallest thing in

a small town was

anything

Old

But who could’ve known 

in those days?

Who could’ve 

possibly?

Before the interstate

rolled its slick tounge out

over Appalachia -

Before The Walmart clawed 

itself

         up from the dirt like 

a newborn antichrist-

Before the tobacco and cotton was

ripped from the earth-scalp

by the roots

and the fields laid back 

thick 

with rolling oceans of corn 

and soybean

Before the TV screens filled our

homes and closed our doors 

shut

Before the Internet rendered 

knowledge 

arbitrary

Before we were all reduced 

to inventory

Before we were Big 

when we still 

free 

to...