Ames Progressive

There’s a picture on the mantle
Names carved in the shiny wall
Bones in the pasture skulls in the riverbed
And there’s a peat fire smoldering
Slow and steady underground
Spontaneous combustion no one really knows for sure
Natural selection atavistic kind of thing
Force of nature like the scream of the wind
Mother of invention original sin
No peace dividend
There’s rumors from the [...]

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I will fill in my trail.
No one will find me.
I will burn the wallpaper
and with it all the laughs it has absorbed.
I will bury an eyelash in drying concrete-
and cut my finger on a book at the library.
Surprise!
I am now immortal.
And the horror of a minute alone is mine all mine.

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I am a magician.
I turned my house into a grave.

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Breath makes contact with blood
And joins the rush of the flood.
What air once contained
Now rolls through my veins
And will one day flow back into the mud.

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The number of years U.S. troops have occupied Iraq, as of March 20, 2008: 5
Total U.S. soldier death count in Operation Iraqi Freedom, as of March 23, 2008: 4000
(icasualties.org)
Total U.S. military spending on the Iraq war, in dollars, as of March 20, 2008: 504,461,000,000
Total U.S. military spending per day, in dollars, on the Iraq war: [...]

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Pounds of food the average American family throws away per year: 467.2
Dollar amount the average American family spends on food they throw away: 589.76
Total dollar amount Americans spend on food they throw away: 43,052,480,000
Percentage of fruit the average full service restaurants throw away per day: 37.6
Pounds in grain the average full service restaurants throw away [...]

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