The Art of Tetman Callis Poems opening the second front

opening the second front

november 14, 2001, and i’m high. it’s 11 o’clock. the 11th hour.
the taliban are broken and fleeing—like slaughtered chickens,
by the reported report of their leader, whose name
i forget but he didn’t have—doesn’t have—a catchy name like hitler.
now there was a name you could sink your teeth into.

not to be too bloodthirsty about it, but let us—us being me,
in my several manifestations of self, always alone but
never lonely—let us celebrate tonight the mixed blessing
of so many jihaders being eager for martyrdom under
american carpet-bombing and spooky.

oh spooky. to be under spooky. there you are,
you’re on the ground, it’s dark, you hear aircraft overhead
but you can’t see them and figure they can’t see you,
but spooky has the range down tight with a night-goggled
crew loosing tubes of fire with a thousand explosions
at their ends. you’re at those ends, farewell.

i keep getting distracted from our war and everything else
and smoking more pot, which sounds like a good plan to us—
all of me—right now. it’s a new moon making a useful excuse
for something where the true excuse has always been, when it is the case,
oh look—i have more pot—i think i’ll smoke it.

it is the case now, with a dozen three- and four-month-old
plants in what we call the studio. any time is pot-tea time.
or lame pun time. or smoke time. smoke the main brace.
once it’s burned through, watch the watch collapse.

before, or at the very start of, when tonight i began getting
herbally distracted, i made a list of goals for the next
two months. five they are in number, these goals, and here they are.
but first, another hit. i grow some pretty decent weed.

goal the first is to finish the periodicals, which means
to plow in a readsome way through the three stacks
of magazines etc. on the floor in front of the television,
which three stacks total
wait—
37 inches in height. such a forbidding lot of transience.
wait—
more pot. come to me, my lovely, my mary jane,
let us open a second front.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

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