Two Poems By Michael Cormier
IT’S A WONDERFUL COUNTRY
Immersed in it, rehearsed in it,
Everyone’s well versed in it,
Railing and hailing their flag waving, hand shaking, back slapping, good old party plan.
Bigger than you, better than you,
Glad to undo your fetters for you,
By railing and hailing their flag waving, hand shaking, back slapping, good old party plan.
Yes, it’s a wonderful country,
Surely the greatest on earth,
But dare disagree and they’ll railroad you out right by the tails of your shirt.
Patronizing, advertising,
Most especially aggrandizing,
By railing and hailing their flag waving, hand shaking, back slapping, good old party plan.
Capitalistic, militaristic,
And no, they never get sick of it,
Railing and hailing their flag waving, hand shaking, back slapping, good old party plan.
Yes, it’s a wonderful country,
Surely the greatest on earth,
But dare disagree and they’ll railroad you out right by the tails of your shirt.
Well maybe I’ll stay and maybe I’ll go,
But the truth is, you know,
Yes, it’s a wonderful country,
Surely the greatest on earth,
But dare disagree and they’ll railroad you out right by the tails of your shirt.
SAVE THE CROCODILES
We’ve got pipe lines and strip mines,
We’ve got freight trains and jet planes,
And we’re all flying faster,
Heading toward disaster,
And if we don’t want to crash,
I think we better ask,
“Why don’t we save something wild?
Let’s save the crocodiles.
We’ve got REO’s and options,
We’ve got IRA’s we’re watching,
To see how fast they grow,
But brother don’t you know,
Man don’t live by bread alone,
Better read that Rosetta stone,
It says to save something wild,
You gotta save the crocodiles.
We’ve got iPods and tablets,
We’ve got booze and cocaine habits,
We’ve got malls and tittie bars,
And rockets that are bound for Mars,
But in the city that never sleeps,
It just may be time to weep,
Oh Lord, can’t we save something wild,
Can’t we save the crocodiles?
Now Man may not be extinct,
But it’s not too strange to think,
That something’s got to change,
No, I’m not Tarzan, you’re not Jane,
But I’m not talking super powers,
I just wanna plant some flowers,
And hope to save something wild,
I want to save the crocodiles.
Let’s save the crocodiles.
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Honey on the road to San Francisco with some of the Spanish explorers
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
"Cities of the Golden Gate," Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1893. Most illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Prologue to the story of the Spanish exploration and settlement of California
Seasonal migrations of animals now extinct in California probably created the roads the native people used before the Spanish land exploration of California. “The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that started 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, around the time the Earth was thawing out from the Ice Age. The gigantic beasts, which migrated from Asia across a now-vanished land bridge called Beringia, are known as Rancholabrean megafauna, after the famous La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles — the graveyard of thousands of saber-toothed tigers, giant bison and other extinct animals.”[1]
The seasonal migrations of the large mammals may have created the substantial roads used by the indigenous people after their arrival.[2]
Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein argue that Paleoindian over-hunting led to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Others argue that climate change was responsible for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. As the last major glaciation ended around 12,000 years ago, climate warmed too quickly for the megafauna to adapt.
