Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Come closer, Mr. Belz; your sentence
is commuted. Faulkner believed God
was dead, our pursuit of him no
more than "a steeplechase toward nothing,"
a credo hard to follow if you've seen
the Arch all yellowed & pinked, snow
falling carelessly on lonely,
dirty St. Louis (a Coke town, not Pepsi),
no drugs in sight, the haze not hash
smoke but December fog and seven beers.
Hard to believe that God doesn't want
us to listen to Surfer Rosa, or to bounce,
screaming, however briefly into Eisenhower
America. Belz, you prefer Budweiser
to microbrew & Frost to Stevens but I say
it hasn't a thing to do with your children--
it's drizzly in Missouri, the Mississippi
is high & you are beautiful, bloodshot
& high as one can get, short of paying
the eight bucks to ride to the top.