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Song of the Badlands (poem)

By Bob McGlynn

      the wind picks up dust
from strewn cinder block and brick
small twisters cake the pores
of GI's home from the war
their last frame of life
glimpsed from the battered rim of a helmet
blown along blacktop like tumbleweed
in Hue
and South Dakota

      rope swing from a leaning tree
you get close and cough
from the chaff of dead wood
against a backdrop of pirated and gutted hills
the shadow of the noose
crossing a pile of bones on
staked land of minerals and oil

(the dead buffalo lay in its' tipi
teeth pulled for the gold)

      small clouds of calcium rise
with every step
cavalry swords traded for automatic weapons
the sound piercing sand and gravel
and cutting jungle foliage

      home from the war
back to the town and cities with an amputated arm and empty factories
caught flak to drink gin on stoops
and wait for the check
nodding out into American top soil
of broken glass and shit

      troops on the corner
protecting staked land - bankers pavement
the hangman's rope dangles above
in the slow moving air
its' shadows crossing cracked beams and ripped gratings
surrounding their boots

      an eagle descends past the fall
of the noonday sun
broken arrow in its' beak
sailing along the Pacific coast
past Mexico and south to the Pole
      its' broken neck lays frozen on the ice
sinking into the warmer earth to wait
in America you can hear the beating of hoofbeats
and watch the wigged ascent
from the southern polar cap thundering toward middle earth

      Hue rose against the dust
the Dakotas and America will also rise

—Bob McGlynn