Vincent Farnsworth




Vincent Farnsworth is part of that exciting California/Czech Republic group that publishes JEJUNE:America Eats Its Young, one of the more wonderful little magazines in hard copy at the moment. He can be reached at aifsprag@ mbox.vol.cz.




the canyons of san diego

another blue-black crow
in front of grey-white smog, soaring
over a temporarily tree-filled canyon
that runs west from the 8-oh-5 freeway,
bringing the drybed of Otay river
under the Beyer bridge, then
the bridge at Broadway,
the new trolley tracks, and freeway 5,
to the bay,
U.S. border, south california,
temporarily tree-filled:

like was Mission Valley:
what mission? whose valley?
ride through for the best chance to feel,
tangibly, the Curse.
cruise along interstate 8
and see us damned,
honk if you're driving on
sacred burial ground,
or just a flood plane:

gosh we didn't think
about the rainy season when we put in
the business parks, car parks, &
these are the parks we get:

knew someone up in Oakland
who didn't feel the earthquake
that flattened an overpass
that smashed the people
that waited to merge
because she was parallel parking,
that skill required for citizenship,
the perception of depth.

and now over the canyon soars
a border patrol helicopter,
like the one brought down ten years ago
by a boy with a rock by the river,
the Goliath machine
smashing down,
a bath of metal and flame,
but killing just a guard,
who'd driven on freeway 8 to work,
frustrated with the traffic,
clearing his throat,
changing the radio,
worrying about his gut and his hairline,
his unruly potsmoking son,
mad at his exwife,
flashing his mind,

tumbleweeds,
a chance of showers,
roadrunners, and a funny
reverse swastika trailing feathers

as he careens and careers
through pockets of fibrous souls,
over the singing of springs
driven back underground,
through walls of holes from the missing sounds
of gourd rattles,
of bees swarming,
of eggs cracking from within,
across the trajectories of hummingbirds
that overfly and mistaking for sky
slam into the mirror-sided highrises
on the edge of Mission Valley,
their little dead bodies raining down.











terrorist poem

let the car bombs come
let them come let them come,
let the loaded trucks swerve around the barriers
and the guards with no bullets in their rifles,
let the slide of state power for this
and laissez faire for that
into a world of crap
happen with a quick dash of tabasco sauce,

the glee on the face of the true believer
his foot to the floor and molars showing
to be atomized in seconds
with the squint of the agent
hoping his check isn't late
putting an altitude-triggered bomb
on a passenger plane,

booby trapped baby seats
effective individual action that kills individuals
there is good art and bad art
embassy bombs and church bombs
a premature detonation by the preschool
a gentle retiree with the wrong package
heard the Net is the sum of all knowledge
a keystroke in Langley exploding a monitor
blamed on a bomber who gladly accepts
and studies the pancake effect, gets hungry,
or a smaller letter to only remove a hand
that just stirred honey into coffee.

Why hasn't anyone in Chicago
brought down a jumbo jet with a bazooka?
Why hasn't San Diego's Coronado Bridge
twisted into the Navy's bay?
Why does the border patrol headquarters in Texas
still stand brick to brick, why isn't
the Esalen Institute reaching the heavens
in the form of radioactive dust?
All these beautiful moments and monuments
to explode no problem, the grunge skater
apparently had something in that backpack
when he entered the office of the ACLU
seventeen molotov cocktails through the windows
of Mothers Against Drunk Driving
the board of the League of Women Voters
eliminated over the course of a weekend
nailbombs to private homes
rug tacks imbedded in the treasurer
a kneeling girl who just said
Father forgive them they don't know what they do
buried under beams and pews.

Dave was just standing at the water cooler in the Federal Building
for Susan the World Bank was her dream job, as she saw
light glint off low flying aircraft
from her office on the north side, she approved
a higher interest loan to a
starving African state, with finality.
the innocent bystander guiltily laughs
when the heat explodes a Mercedes Benz
the delivery driver wrestling the hand truck of soda stacks
around the lunch room corner in the World Trade Center
ten percent of all coke machines in Japan
powered by solar energy
blew up simultaneously
slitting the throats of kids who don't brush their teeth
by a religious cult that opposes western cola
and held its meetings in the basement of Exxon
before the British Petroleum skyscraper
went kaboom, not killing
the honored visitor, an expresident
in a different part of the complex,

he hadn't been told he was going to lose his election
he didn't know the Shining Path were so out of control
he ended up with only secretaries as friends
nobody who could overthrow anything.

the first bomb was a diversion, the second an afterthought
in between was a moment of silence
where all who heard considered their motives
doing the right thing and indulging in self hatred
became one and the same, this inspiration sponsored by
the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Iraqi soldiers
buried alive under hot sand pushed by army tractors
powered by the american minimum wage.

when I worked to help the weak and the persecuted
the poor and the victim, I did not find love,
warmth did not flow through our hands and eyes
but bitterness, defensiveness,
neurotics, phonies and informants,
many hands holding up a sky dripping down cold filth
all the pieces in the puzzle
of an ever more sickening picture,

I detonated the hundred pound charge in the "nineteenth hole"
because I hated politicians
and their golf games
but also the groundskeepers
and also the green grass itself
and the caddies' mystery ethnicities
and the little animals struggling to exist
in the miniforest by the sand trap on top of
the desecrated ancient burial ground
full of losers.










Caminiti in Mexico September 96

Caminiti stirred from
in front of the blower,
stepped up and watched the pitcher
throw a giant aspirin.
Cam swiveled his hips and it
flew away. he decided to jog around

and approaching third recalled
the gulf of mexico, that one
indigenous fish that during
aquatic famines
can tunnel under the texas desert
to eat the roots of cacti.
what was it called?
the arboreal muddler?
not the barbed wirefish.
Caminiti sat back in his fever chair
and forgot. he's dropped
the ball
in the IV
in his hamsized forearm.
rehydrate
the angel sloth.
try to be a better citizen.

he was up again
just before he realized
"locker room behavior"
is a small set of
arbitrary responses,
both verbal and non.
he took it out on the ball
from the plate's other side this time,
fragmenting it to the second deck.
this jaunt around the bases
cooled the sweat on his forehead,
pushed a drop of blood into the cotton,

spotting his sleeve, to be caught
by the cleaner, to catch hell
from her husband, to contract
Caminiti's
intestinal
virus.




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