Per Diem - Kyle Kulseth

Public pundits preach
From their elevated pulpits
The proverbial policies
Of patient patriotism
Privatizing mass illusions
Lauding state-run executions
And the walls of sound divide us from
Our keys to absolution
--Salvation!

And they do it line-by-line
Slot-by-slot
Spot-by-spot
PER DIEM! Pill-by-pill

Each day they do it
Line-by-line
Drink it up
Drop-by-drop

Writers and Execs
Sell you nice photos of your day
Pricy enforced reality
And you're all too glad to pay
For the Zoloft and the Paxil
And Viagra that they're selling
Libidos are synthetic now
And so are your feelings!
--PER DIEM!

Grand Wizards of AIG
CNN
And NBC
Sell it, lie-by-lie

Each day they do it lie-by-lie
Pill-by-pill
Cop-by-cop
Buck-by-buck

Do we really want
To swallow what they're peddling us?
Fake thoughts and their placebo drugs?
With vacant stares, absent shrugs?
Will we breathe in this miasma
Buy inhalers for our asthma?
Resurrect our minds and souls or live
Content putrescentia?
--EACH DAY!

Know we take it line-by-line
Bill-by-bill
Beck-by-Beck
Each time, pill-by-pill

PER DIEM!

De Facto Threshold (The Daily) - Kyle Kulseth

De Facto Threshold
Was supposed to have been
A poem
About falling just short
You know,
In life.

But wouldn't you know it...

"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"
Just came on the speakers
Built
Into the walls
Of The Daily--
A coffee shop--
In Bozeman
Montana
United States
Of America
North America
Northwestern Quadrisphere
And now, and now it's a bubblegum locale
And I can't hold onto failure
As a subject

Well...

Today must be the day--
The "someday"--
In The Daily
Because it seems love has found us
Us and our recycled cups
Wrapped around lattés
And jasmine teas.

Well aren't we the fortunate ones?

De Facto Threshold
Was going to be about frustration
But Journey didn't want it that way.
Not in The Daily.
Not today.
Why should I write about that
If anxious Mr. Hagar
Can't drive
55?

Mr. Bungle just sat down.
He wants to know
Where all that extra money went.
"So do I.
Same with everyone."
I reply.
"Dumb kid."
He says.

I don't get mad, though.

I thought today would be a dirge.
Turns out it's a sugar-coated
Power ballad.

If The Daily had wheels
Don't you just bet it could go
Anywhere?
At midnight?

Sure it could.
And if I, and the quiet old couple
And the neo-hippy barista girl
And the Dutch businessmen
Speaking British English
In America
At The Daily
On College
In Bozeman
Don't stop believing...
We'll find ourselves (when we leave)
In Cairo
Egypt
Africa
Northeastern Quadrisphere
At a supermarket
And we'll play Air Supply
Over the loudspeakers
And Allen Ginsberg
And Walt Whitman
Will wonder,
"What the fuck?"

But that's not what the poem
"De Facto Threshold"
Was supposed to have been about.