JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Bang bang Lulu

Lulu’s gone away

who we gonna bang bang

when Lulu’s gone away?

             - Bawdy sixties ballad

 

Before we arrived, music was woodpeckers

pollution was vulture’s dung heaps

lions picked their teeth with victim’s bones

anthills crumbled, glaciers tumbled

 

Out in space planets collided soundlessly

pulsars imploded invisibly and black holes

still undiscovered, swallowed everything

in reach – in short, banging has been around…

 

Since we arrived, Lulu’s become more organized

her body hair shaved for timber, her green

hills mined and quarried for chemicals, grinding

and bumping she was drilled in intimate places

 

We sucked her body fluids to run our sexy little

vehicles, each pod containing a single pea

careening directionless like termites on tar tracks

bang, crash, growing graveyards of rusting iron

 

We desecrated all her secret places, tore her

album of folk music to shreds, she’s past saving

now, skirts up to her balding chemotherapy scalp

everything exposed, derelict mine shafts, extinct pub songs

 

And now we’re off to conquer other worlds

we’ve packed our chromium saws into bio degradable

bags, with nuclear engines we’ll dump our waste into

space as we go, singing our bawdy verses to wake and bang

 

even a most innocent Venus unaware her masters have arrived