On the day of the 5 year anniversary of the Iraq war.

Five

fingers on my hand
count down to five
breaths I have to take
to clear my head of
seven devils and five
years you've been able to fake
two wars and five decades
of detonation, leading up to these last

four years
four years
four years

for years I've know you worked in shadow
with five corners spread in defense
lock down your cross and halo
cause I'm gonna use it to build a fence
around the ones who can't stand up
cause you've broken all their bones
around the ones who've burned their backs
cause you've bombed all their homes
around the ones who wake up hungry
and the ones who wake up late
and you will wake up holy
in your satanic godly hate
and I will take

Five
breaths
for each
Year
Of Our Deaths

Five
minutes
for each
limb
to grow back
the last
Five
Ages of Man
stones in my back–
and I wonder
what true numbers hold
these five years I've birthed
a dragon, black.

- Cheryl Anderson

TO BE SHOUTED FROM THE ROOFTOPS

FUCK what's real. We are the Universe;
A condom broken in the middle of starseed–
Channel that
Coming down all viscous light and acid-sound
The drums, the drums they speak of HORUS, rising
Every time you decide to live beyond your sacreligion,
Nature in a prison, carried-out, shook-up, piled up, waterboarded,
infected Malls of War, hospital beds–
Every time you decide to get out of your head.

FUCK what's real. This place is a landing ground.
A place to be birthed from, not burned to the ground.
And if it's true what they say, and the war comes,
I'll see you on the train to the camps, the razor wire,
Pyres rising higher–find the answers in the fire in the third tower–
WHAT THE FUCK? How can this happen with such little time?
We just got a fax that his blood turned to wine
When Magdalene came–
Don't forget that name.
She's not too far down if you follow the game, like a chessmaster
I step into the Eye
of the North-South aligned Pyramid of the Sky and am squeezed–Deep–
Nothing sleeps eternal sleep.

FUCK what's real. We are the Universe.
The Lotus-rocking Isis and Osirus, the twilight-sighing, lip-locked.
And you know, there's snow in Atlantis.
And the signs are all around. Your mind is bound
but not gagged, trust me, you'll be found.

If you FUCK what's real.
And come in the mystery.

- Cheryl Anderson

Battle Cry/Children of the Wasteland
(found by the railroad tracks off Plano Road in Dallas, TX)

I read a book about you once
the motions of stars, suns becoming allah
sons forgetting mammas
the children of the wasteland tuning in
and turning on, dropping out the bottom of the well

and onsoforth into the heartsold deserted world of dream, replaced and reguided with your fickle phallic palaces and obelisks of conceit, missiles attacking
the darkest and loveliest part of womb,
entombing instead of planting,
regurgitating instead of creating,
well, honey,
In your own numerology I am breaking
apart this shit you started
23 skidoo and out you go into the blue, a little boy
blue, buggered by his Father

For the white trees that bloomed in Africa once
are embalmed eternal
in glass cases
heartlit in the sky of my museum

Remember the song we sang back in the Day
when Word was just a part
of the Song?

Beat in me now, beat in me, Om

From the desert I come

From your pearly gates I come

From your mystic braids of wind I come

and drink the joyous juice of fruit so wild
the nightshade takes two steps back and covers its eyes
for to look upon would be to touch
and to touch would be madness
and to eat would be knowledge of madness
and in the wasteland, one wastes not, wants not of madness

it is a poe tion, potion of a poisioned poet gleaming wild eyed with lips spread like great pink fingers, rows of teeth spewing waterlillies and deep underworlds of song
Eve's sister and I drank it gladly with the angels, we were the rebel girls with snakes for hair
Belladonna took her names from us, and Datura, and Wormwood,
the songstresses of Saturn
turning now, returning tunes to their originator,
we orgasm in mirrored note-shades of cerulean
while retelling the sky

I wrote the book about you once.
You are not what it is
to come. You are not what it is to burst forth, to break through.
322 thinks you're dead, don't you get it? They've been using you.

No blood book will speak your name in ten thousand years
should this place be in chains
should this place be your change
Chaos out of order
Order is no Brother
and Beauty, she exudes unity
but she will cut out your tongue

We are the Children of the Wasteland, marking our territory with menstrual blood
and seed from a thousand seas of melody, all worlds coalescing into the boiling waters
of insanity
all worlds end in the same sum
all suns end in the same sum
all sons come from the same One
and all songs sung from the same
Om

- Cheryl Anderson

Introduction:
12 baktun . 19 katun . 14 tun . 14 uinal . 4kin

I am not interested
in the flights of false gods,
the carrion of magazine covers, shiny pretty toy drummers,
slick-haired, pinned-up angels whispering barely heard breath
through thick begging bangs, smoke drum machines,
thick cock guitars, pleading spotlight.

I am not interested
in well-dressed dolls, Aphrodite's discarded minstrels,
life-blood and vocals wasted on a perfectly healthy robot.
Give me a scream.
Way I see it,
we're in the end of things, the crossroads, the nether-parts
and this wheel's been turning long enough.

I knew it was a Tuesday
when I saw the Bearded One at the supermarket.
He bought a pound of flesh,
a copy of the Inquirer, a pack of Camels.
I bummed one for conversation.
As the smoke twisted his eyes
I asked him the time,
realized he was mourning it;
this nine-to-five salvation-on-the-clock gig
wasn't treating him so well.

He said:
Whatever kid you got left in there
that hasn't been entrenched in 12 month cycles,
six week report cards, state tests at 8 (no talking),
fear of next month's cramps, or fear of not having them,
Whatever kid you got that's interested
in getting out of town, riding a bus to no where
getting off in Vegas, heading west,
Whatever kid you got in your tangled hair,
your mismatched socks, your pain of abandonment,
your torn adolescence, tattered doll-friends and sad dogs:
Don't let them get interested in leaving.
There's a Time around the corner that everyone forgot,
where the sidewalk failed to recognize it was just bubble gum
below a pretense of rock,
This Time, it hides in tunnels safe from smog-sad songs
a far cry from any house of rising suns
but it's a place, none the less.
You should come.

I told him I wasn't interested
in the nightmare, I've lost friends to junk
might lose more before Christmas.
But Easter deaths are always worse.
He shook his head and said, No honey,
This is where you belong.
And he took me to the ancient workers of song,
where they'd made a shack from a home:
three twisted trees around two rusted railroad cars, confused cats
drinking wine in the yard from yellow moon-skinned bathtubs.
A broken gate-latch
lets most of our ideas out at night, he said,
but if you come out here,
away from the light, everything turns two shades more interesting.
Check out the stars, he said, the way the trees tell time,
and turtles line the soft streams of fatewater with strong backs.

So on this porch of un-baptized wood
We kicked back.
on a cinderblock mantle,
waited for the wind to blow a train whistle night—
waited with the panhandling cats and the old caboose,
waited with my beggar's songs and my tongue loose,
waited while our minds erased sirens from this place
waited with

time

(it gets me through)

- Cheryl Anderson