Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Them Goodbye

All right then
What say we do away
With all that
Stuff about losing it or killing it
Or calling it romance
And no more
Caterwauling about God or the
Icosahedron where we drank and danced

                                in Muskegon,
No more songs to our old saddle pals
The women we loved or didn't love
        enough
The children we gave up to the knife
The cats and dogs and Vietnamese Pot-
                            bellied
Pigs we've carried over the Great Divide
The barracks
And howling orphans at Midnapore, or anything
That has funny words in it
Like Rutabaga Philip
                            Morris          Garde
Du Corps
No more harangues against marriage,
                                  against divorce,
About greed or acid rain or getting
         fucked or forgot, you know
What I mean
All that preaching about this and that
                                          giving tit for tat
Telling us where it's not
Or where it's at,
                               no more
Essays concerning hands or feet or bums getting
Holy in the streets,
Christ, no, let's just shuck it all, make it
Against the law
Turn the damn things into kindling or little what-
Nots with bubbles of shellac, and when
The Peacemakers and the Pure In Heart and all
                                  the rest of them ask us what
We will leave behind, what then?
We will break open our rucksacks and bring out the goods,
Only bread, brother
Only salt
Only the charred bouquet                        
                            of our red red wine

James Lineberger