Excerpts from:

FUTURE AMNESIA

Part I

Mel C. Thompson

A slacker Poet from Concord

In Search of Undeserved World Fame

The following are limited selections from Part 1.

Contact the author for free PDFs and/or free chapbooks of the whole text.

Hymn Of The Unknown Bacteria

I have one billion children

In a short summer afternoon.

I predated humanity

And will postdate this planet.

Carried within a blown fragment,

I will ride the supernova’s shock

Wave to another world and grow

Again amid lightening storms.

You barely survive allergies,

Complain of ten-degree changes,

As I boil in pools of sulfur

And live in ancient ice sheets,

Hibernating for a million years,

Reviving with a drop of water.

By the time your medicine hits

Market, I have already evolved

Into another species. You lay

On your therapy couch, crying.

Try dividing yourself in half.

It works wonders on your ego.

My Third Marriage

A Single blue joy pips

On a hill-cottage roof.

This road of rock and pine

is not teary or dreamy.

Far below, the bay ripples

like a thousand glittering

wrinkles on the water-skin

beneath the clear sky-void.

I wear the yellow heart robe,

dead to our old struggles.

I have nothing left to sell,

and I purchase very little.

I am marrying this ocean.

Our wedding canopy

shall be empty space.

This is true romance.

My legacy shall be one room

full of junk you may kindly

throw away. As for posterity:

Film my library burning,

my sacred Collected Works

blissfully feeding the flames.

In my final incarnation, nothing

I write will be committed to

paper. My poems shall be

written on the scales of carp,

When springtime comes, they

Shall shed them like snakeskin.

This creation is a sand painting

by a God with no memory.

The Man Who Cheated Death

I’ll be one hundred seventy this June.

Although the United State itself

no longer exists, I am still balancing

my checkbook to the penny. No one

can fool me. Nothing tempts me

beyond reason. I see through every

sales pitch. I’ve memorized the one

thousand approaches of fatal love

and studiously avoided them all.

You cannot breach my perimeter.

I don’t smoke, gamble, drink or inhale

anything other than incense smoke.

I am sterile and cannot be enslaved

by child-support payments or alimony.

My TRW is cleaner than surgical

equipment. I consume mostly

soy products and pureed vegetables.

There is not an ounce of fat on

my custom-designed, wrinkle-free

face. Money cannot move me

to excessive work or violence.

I am too honest and fair for words.

I feel no disdain, carry no grudge —

no, not even a smidge of hate.

My insides feel light and cool.

My limbs are flexible and strong.

I run like a German engine.

I cry at my tan, lacquered desk.

Oh, to have never loved

too much, nor fought too hard.

Self-deception has its privileges.

It is the battery of romance,

the very gears of the life force.

Surely I’ve stumbled upon this thing

called knowing too much. The truth,

rumored to set us free, is its own

gilded prison. Think twice

before toying with transcendence.

The Ghost Is The Machine

My body is a singing instrument of the gods.

My body is not for my personal use.

It is collectively owned by all the world’s dusts.

All the world’s dusts are Mother God’s body.

Keep making entries in your palm pilot.

You and your weekly planner are doomed.

You are water and a sprinkling of minerals.

This is a test of your early-warning system.

You have t-minus one billion years.

Our sun is an expanding red giant.

Common sense will be cooked into all of us.

This poem is temporary non-sand.

My lungs are still pink.

I plan to keep shouting this shit.

I will boast my way into a sediment layer.

Your opinion of me will die with you.

I crayon the Universe with my mouth.

The limits of sex have fully dawned on me.

Procreation is not an insurance policy.

Our song is simply a table of elements.

We are blown about by solar winds,

Bits of interstellar photochemistry

Surging through the gulf-stream of space-time.

We are currents, tides, volcanic sea beds.

Hanford 1-21-2001

The sky eviscerates itself above

Symmetrical tract-housing

Where iron chimneys form columns

Marching toward an orange furnace.

Facing extinction, we await the kiln,

Are glazed in chain-store-style

Nouveau-Dachau, as the blue-black

Gloom descends over the death

Of all tender things and slaughter-

Houses of the slow. Before Helios

Pierces the horizon, a million

Pinpricks of clear, yellow allow

For a redneck winter Passover.

The spirit of pointless business

Slips over and around my house.

This torpor is intoxicating.

There is safety in incompetence.

Die in peace. But pray always

For these, the children

Of the Santa Ana wind.

Happiness

Happiness walks backwards

Through side doors, breaks

Locks, lies in wait.

It shuns planned outings,

Turgid family reunions

And detailed organizing.

Happiness sneaks away

From award ceremonies

And victory celebrations,

Inexplicably deserting

The fireplace trophy mantle.

Happiness deserts couples

Holding hands at twilight

On Indian-summer nights.

The daybreak is empty.

We’re out of film. Happiness

Is like a whiff of incense or

Perfume coming from uncertain

Locations or persons. It avoids

High holidays and regaled bishops

A’whirl in golden gowns.

Happiness, like a ladybug,

Lands on your clothing

While you’re looking away.

In your hurry, you may

Casually brush it off

Like any other annoyance.

On Larkin, Melvin & The Poetry Clown

To fail at this gray science,

is but a table-scrap sin,

requiring no great penance.

So what if worldly relatives

and dandies avoid your door

when making friendly rounds?

Yes, there’s the odious task

of confessing to no pension

to the fair ladies’ fathers,

the dirty road to penury,

sudden interest in Stoics,

Cicero and the rest,

the increased concern

over hospital bills,

familiarity with pain.

To fail at this gray science,

is but a trifling crime.

Your fine will be a pittance.

Catalogue your drafts.

Carefully date and order

letters sent to nobodies.

Towards the end, inquire

into Mysticism or C.S. Lewis.

Absurdly flirt with Orthodoxy.

At last regain composure.

Arrange for some dignity.

Search the lonely listings

for a homely, kindly wife

to prevent one’s dying alone

in disgrace and anxiety.

To fail at this gray science

is a true and tested path.

The language of defeat

comes awkwardly at first,

but soon you’ll be fluent

as a polyglot in Babel.

Atheism & Pantheism

(How Neruda Solved The Puzzle)

One law of death

and flourishing life

rules this oceanic body,

this Mother Earth,

those ancient stars;

and each water-logged

plank, every briny cell,

dividing mindlessly, is

one flesh with your breast.

All are sex and decay.

Neither Marx, nor Jesus,

could dispute the phosphor-

escent, burning semen

and the conclusive agony

of wondrous orgasm.

Humanistic Socialists

and Christian Capitalists

are slain with holy love

for the same enig-

matic rapture of erupting

suns. Fill your skies

with gods or empty space.

Probe that one vault,

dark, everlasting, one

set of mutating chemicals.

Our colossal womb has

no theology or propa-

ganda, but only howls

with whispering terror,

unending, inevitable

pleasure. Upon these

sawtooth crags, with blis-

tered hands, mythi-

maticians and Commun-

ists declare world truce.

Since only the afterlife

remains seriously in doubt,

let us mutually surrender

our immortality for peace.

Let us be eternally joined

in sacred dust, not clutching

onto this ego made of sand

which will become, at last,

a catfish fin, or the iris

of some future lover’s eye.

My Poetry Homework

I read the Dylan Thomas Torah,

struggling here in Palestine with

the painterly cruelties of God.

Poems and scriptures are

rudders out of control, sails

untied. The angels see

their job description changing

hourly, as CEOs re-spin

bad press conferences.

Theological journalists sift

the blood-spattered details

of this passion scene, submit

rough drafts for editing.

Prophets now on cable

sponsor pledge drives.

Whale sharks tune in daily,

suck whole constellations

through their cavernous

mouths, seeking nutrients

from amoeba to Andromeda.

We clutch the dorsal fin.

I Return To The Fold

My trivial love blossomed

into a black plastic bouquet

I will tape to my forehead.

Professionals in wool suits

sporting optimism like batons,

beat me into a hasty retreat.

Their mean, hyperactive children

crowded me out of the minivan

I was driving to salvation.

Together, we brandished perfectionism,

rallied with a pandemic sense of entitlement,

embraced an intolerant white light,

became so ugly and powerless

that prostitutes and crack fiends

preyed on us like trapdoor spiders.

We wandered ivy-league campuses

in search of graduate degrees,

pendants, memorabilia,

wrote out checks to authority figures,

hoping to purchase self respect.

They milked us dry and tossed

the cracked, translucent, drained husks

we used as exoskeletons, out of porticoes

where elderly women of impeccable taste

and irrefutable refinement flitted about

in glowing haloes singing tributes.

I return now to the fold,

hauled in with the sheaves,

asleep in the pews. Fiery dreams

sizzle about my freshly-shaven head.

I left with a prodigal’s fortune

and returned from the threshing floor

drunk, tearful, ecstatic, with only this poem.

Jealous Of Norman Rockwell

What is painted on those midwestern faces?

Their innocence begs an awkward question:

What of a barn that is fire engine red?

How shall cynics deconstruct the obvious?

Can I forgive an ordinary wheat farmer

For not knowing how to begin to understand

Me and the uninsured of God? His motley

Children amble to school all sharpened

By the absence of the specter of lonely

Death. Even the wrinkles of his elderly

Form a sculpture of grace and ease

Which strikes me as unacceptable

Wealth. Who are these, whose poverty

Is sung like a hymn, but spiritual

Billionaires taunting me from another

Direction? Here we grimly struggle

To reassemble the unrelated fragments

That we hope to use to build a person

From scratch. But that is not like baking

Perfect toll house cookies from scratch.

Like a mother whose daughter was

Murdered, we are forever shattered,

In recovery, but alas, never whole.

How dare he paint those souls who,

From cradle to grave will sing of

A blessed mythical ethos? Oh to have

Never seen “the evil which is done

Under the sun,” lamented Solomon.

Dorothy from Kansas would have seen

Me as an ordinary black witch who

Falsely believed my political sciences

Would have the mojo and voodoo

To heal me. I pass the graveyard

Chanting, “Hail you, victorious dead!”

Norman Rockwell does me no good.

He paints a religion I can never join.

Pre-Game Show For Funerals

Some uncles and aunts

got the genealogy bug

and gloomied up our barbecue,

told us how they’d traced

our family to foggy, little

Norwegian villages, how

they’d combed North America

tracking down the ever-increasing

number of family tombs and crypts

spread out over countless

sleepy graveyards from Oregon

to Ontario. We glumly reflected

upon the rising number of dead

and how short the intervals were

between funerals. They said,

“Some of the burial sites are gone,

already tilled over for parks

and playgrounds.” Indeed our decay

is swift. Our culture too

is buried and redeveloped

from under our feet as we speak.

This indifferent current

races us toward anonymity.

Our opportunities for madcap

love and silly adventures

are scooped up in the hand

of this riptide now spreading

our ideas and our limbs

across this salty shore where

we shall be deposited.

Such liquid as remains

in us, shall be evaporated.

As new waves of vikings

amass to rewrite history,

our love, or failure to love,

is neither noted or decried.