To Where ... A Pony Tale

I didn’t tell my dad, he wouldn’t understand
I said I’d be back, but I didn’t say when
he said, “goodbye, son”
but I didn’t know I was leaving…I thought,
“just gone for the night”, but
the TV was gleaming, radiation was beaming
I knew he didn’t know just how far I’d be goin’

So I headed for Mercury, closest city to atom’s illegitimate sun
eight hours by Mustang we rode
toward the Testing Site of the nuclear family
The sign says,
Atoms beware – Home of Military Values
This dysfunctional family where the Father land
impersonates the sun
under intermittent flashes of narrow-minded engineers
calling themselves brilliant in the ‘50’s
forced underground in the ‘60’s
the out of sight generation – running into the
outta sight generation

As I pulled up in my Mustang, I was welcomed by Shoshones
people who had lived as true sons and daughters in a Garden of Eden
but these same acres now resembled not
the Father or the Mother but
the Father-in-Law, a
pock-marked, cigar-smoking, pin-headed monster
blowing irradiated smoke into our faces
faces, now beginning to resemble our
nearest cosmic cousin, only our facial wounds are
self-inflicted by an abusive $Figure$ Head

This government’s “safe” mushroom clouds of the ‘50’s
produced fallout
which became political when our hair began
falling out
so, those with enough hair began to grow it
riding the mushroom clouds of a counterculture
whose fallout forced above ground testing
underground
and the underground of free expression shook off
the shackles of Post World War II complacency
and rose above Ground Zero, to see earth
pock-marked and adulterated by
men at WORK, burrowing into our
collective womb
to plant the war man’s seeds

I arrived here at the eve of my destruction
sitting in the desert, where military mushroom
clouds once filled the desert sky with doom
I was here to say, “No more testing!”  but felt within, a test
deep down in me I began to feel a bloom
squatting in a desert camp with “Mothers and Others”
I began to contemplate
desert sun, mushroom clouds, prickly pears
the breaking down of atom, our building block
splitting it to create a “Block Buster”
moved me down a now familiar street
thoughts of breaking down my own Adam
overcame my Macho Man, dissolving him
to create much more than Man
I was becoming Wo/man

Sitting in what I once saw as desolate desert
this cactus began to bloom, amazed
I sat with  “Mothers and Others” as my other
awoke
to sing along with men and women, to sing
what I couldn’t sing moments before
but what must be sung now
“I am wo/man”

I fell back, to lay down, to contemplate the Lies
so close to the ground,
so close to the now irradiated dust of life
I fell back, lying in the desert of my bloom
my thoughts felt like thinking about atom and Eve
my mind was expanding, I felt the Big Bang
aiming at mindless engineers

Science begins its foundation with the atom
then cracks it, to create the end
Religion begins with Adam, but cracks
if he becomes Eve
Atoms being split on orders from scientists
to end creation are approved by the churches
While Adams, being liberated to reveal Eves
are condemned by their followers

I followed my gathering clouds of rising consciousness that
were leading me to the wo/man in me
It brought me to where “Mothers and Others” were
preparing to cross the line of legal standing to
illegal standing – illegal
for setting foot where the government had set off Armageddon
Trespass – the charge

I felt it, I began to cross-over myself
to cross over an equally arbitrary line
to trespass into and onto their narrow value system
to trespass into freedom in the “Land of the Free”
I, too, stepped forward, released
here, at the nuclear family’s – test site
where they prepare their sacred family value
total destruction
It was an ending for them
but a beginning for me

I knew that these thermal nuclear family engineers
were the stern fathers of a genetic code
that split atoms, spliced genes, leaked radiation
pissed in cups, talked tough, shook hands
but never held them
These men, here in the desert
had deserted all that was sacred
These men dug in, behind barbed wire
protected by Wackenhut, and Hut, Hut, Hut!
were defiling, not just my Mother
not just our Mother
not just me

But the atom
and the Eve
and Adam and Eve
They are the dreaded flashback
the nightmare of engineered thought
In their creation myth
there’s no Adam and Eve
no Garden of Eden
just an atom splitting evening of total destruction

I pressed myself deeper into the dust of Ground Zero
I felt so near the eve of destruction
I began to see, as we all would on such a night
the meaning of all …………..life

I called home to explain, I’d been gone all night
but they didn’t know who left
I barely knew how far I’d come
the me that went, the man that left, that evening past
now stood anew, in phone booth light, the night after
calling home
with a full moon about to rise to the stars
the son that left, had also risen, awakened to
the dawn of the son to be

1989