The men of that country
are sick.

We don’t know
why they are sick
or how long they’ve been sick.
Curing them seems out of the question. 

Call it a country of sick men
erupting everywhere
there’s a crack to spurt from,
burning their surroundings
whenever they open their mouths.

The sick men appear
to have been rendered mostly mindless
by the sickness.
How else to explain their

comb-overs, wars,
long nosed cars, long reach guns, 
filibusters, a weaponized God, hangings,
unfortunate colognes, blood feasts,
the casual seizing of women, of children,
of other men,
the willed ignorance
of lack of consent, 

the leveraged buyouts,
the wolf pelts, the blessing of
radioactive oceans,
the balls of old oil
in the bellies of seals,

the blank-eyed drooling
in rooms full of vintage guitars
and game balls,
the blackout drunks,
the hard-engine bikes:

all the exquisite arts of suicide and genocide.

The men of that country are sick,
so it is called the country of sick men.
I was born there, live there mostly,
certainly will die there.

There are women there too.
Some of them are sick too
but mostly, I think, they are sick
of the sick men.

They have stories to tell and
you ought to listen,

but if you want to hear those
don’t ask me to tell them.
My tongue’s more than a little sick.
You can smell it a little
or a lot.  I know I can smell it
every time I speak.

To hear those stories,
get into clean air.
Get away from me,
go to the source,
and listen. It will seem 
like a different country
forever after.