Lift twist bend release

I sing

Sweet dreams are made of this

silently, maybe

the machines are so loud

I could be screaming

without drawing a crowd.

 

Up by the bootstraps

pound of the heel

Mr. Laffer’s curve

runs away from here

past the ones in the middle

the country held so dear

to recessionomics and atomic fear.

 

All that’s left of those billboards

they put up in the 50’s

of the dream and the car and the 2.5

is the photo I saw in the library

and the dreams our fathers keep alive.

 

Lift twist bend release

the guy next to me sent

by football coaches

some college in the south

of some renown

to slim him down

bulk him up

So we move like twin arms

of the same common brain

one after another

or dancers

with a 3 second delay

He drinks gallons of water each day

I sing

 

Sweet dreams are made of this

screaming and not drawing a crowd

The Soviets said they had a plan

yet now they’re meeting with the actor man.

 

Lift twist bend release

Ten hours in a tin can

in a hot summer when it was not yet morning

in America

not in the Midwest

not in this factory.

 

–Danny Grosso 

One of those wet mornings

more than dew

less than rain

when the first of the sun

moves like slow glistening arms

and the front yard looks ready to leave for a party

wrapped in cellophane.

Summer’s coming.

 

At the water’s edge

the gap between worlds is tiny

or not there at all

the sea mixes with sand and sand with sea

blue and yellow

become green

and sometimes

red.

 

Bathers lay or frolic

stand in footprints made once

by soldiers

landing or repelling.

This place between worlds

where memory ebbs and flows

tides of pain and bliss

history and ignorance to it

or just willful forgetting.

There’s the sun, after all

and the breeze in the sea air

filled with voices

between the worlds

ebbs and flows

remember, forget

remember, forget.

Summer’s coming.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

 

The suits now look like they did back then

a little shinier

a little slimmer

on the men rushing around him, past him

through him.

He is reminded that a legacy sometimes

has no physical component

brick and mortar

or fire

or sons.

He likes to go, in times like these

walking past the building they named after his brother

and further out

across the river of history and away from the white stone curtains

that hide what he knew before, and more

what he’s learned since

out to the old General’s land

to the flame still alight

two stones there now.

Light changes so fast now.

No accounting for time,

one instant a nighttime blizzard

the next a sunny cherry blossom flurry.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

 

While seemingly new

and inspired just today

or yesterday

when the pink flesh

turned acid red

or maroon

like a Midway lineman

just into the scrum

This feeling that’s become

a movement, a fire, a vocation

desire

has instead been among  us

about and within

longer than memory

past both elation and chagrin

suviving even the pall.

Ask the Haymarket marchers

before the bomber came to call.

Ask Teddy’s Progressives

Henry Wallace’s too

all those marchers

on the Washington mall

Paul Robeson singing

Woody Guthrie and all

strumming together

on ox carts and boxcars

This Land is Your Land

an old classic now

but it was sung among those

with the Populist vow

long before twenty-somethings

attached to their phones

were dreams of their fathers

were frightened or sour

or just wishing for something

that’s just not allowed.

The massing together

of those who’d disobey

is a natural result

of the American way.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

They are saying it’s nice

just around the bend

these ladies in suits, and their anchormen

where a trap may await

to capture your mind

closing it to the outside

addressing a line

with fear or hate

or nothing

but rewind

to a simpler time

a construct

a ruse

a lie.

 

If a mind is imprisoned

in a past that’s a lie

as all the past is

when it’s told by one side

you might miss it at first

or even seeing it twice

when they try to make your prison

seem like paradise.

 

Blue skies alone

do not daylight make

if a shadow encroaches

leaving truth in its wake.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

Into the great unknown

or not so great

That was the aim

though not so straight.

Too much fuel

unstable substrate

turns directed anger

into runaway freight.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

Things that might have been…

2000 – Presented with a virtual tie and numerous voting irregularities on Election Day,  Democratic Presidential Candidate Al Gore overrules some of his advisors and requests a recount of votes cast within the entire State of Florida. The request is for a larger endeavor than the targeted, Broward and Palm Beach County-only recount pushed by members of the Gore team. When the votes are counted, Gore’s strategy is vindicated as he emerges with a narrow victory in Florida, giving him a clear majority in the electoral college, and the presidency.

1/20/01 – Al Gore sworn in as 43rd President of the United States.

9/11/01 – Terrorists attack the United States, flying airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Another plane, believed headed toward the White House, crashes in a Pennsylvania field after passengers disable the hijackers.

2002-2004 – President Gore initiates and executes military operations in Afganistan aimed at finding and bringing to justice those behind the 9/11 attacks. Gore declares that the military operations will be limited in time and destruction, but the human targets prove elusive and the undeclared war drags on much longer than initially expected.

2004 – With the war in Afghanistan dragging on, and accusations of military incompetence beginning to surface in the mainstream media, Republicans nominate war hero and maverick Senator John McCain for President. In a bid for party unity and a nod to the nation’s 41st President, McCain picks Jeb Bush to be his Vice President, saying that the Bush family’s experience in quickly prosecuting, and exiting, the 1991 Gulf War, will inform his presidency.  In another extremely close election, McCain wins the State of Florida by a clear majority with the help of his running mate, that State’s sitting Governor, and defeats Gore in the electoral college to become the 44th President. President Gore wins the popular vote, but loses in the electoral college to become the only candidate of the modern era to fail to win the presidency while winning the popular vote.

2005-2007 – President McCain expands military operations in Afganistan and surrounding areas but resists cries from within his own party to expand the war into Iraq and Iran. Still, McCain has more than he bargained for. The hoped-for Gulf alliance proves fleeting and ineffectual. Initial surges in activity by American forces produce desired results, but clear operational victories become harder to define and pursue as opposition networks become more sophisticated and diverse. Surprise operations by the enemy and growing civilian discontent in occupied areas begin to raise the death toll of American soldiers. After 5 years, the American Military effort seems bogged down.

2008 – Democrats nominate Illinois Senator Barack Obama to run against President McCain. Obama, an African-American who spoke consistently and eloquently against the once-popular war, attracts many new voters to the electoral process and thus forges a victory in November.

2009-2011 – President Obama slowly decreases the American military presence in Afganistan. Horrified Republican legislators, who wish to expand the war in accordance with McCain’s initial troop surges, attempt to block Obama’s domestic legislative agenda in protest.

2012 – Republicans nominate former Vice President Jeb Bush to challenge Obama. Bush promises to expand then end the war, a popular sentiment, though by nature, a hedge. Bush leads in many polls through October. However, Obama’s coalition expands due to continuing efforts aimed at registering young voters. That coalition holds and Obama is re-elected.

2013-2015 – Elected Republicans enjoy growing popularity as President Obama continues to have difficulty enacting his domestic agenda. However, grass-roots frustration within the GOP, stemming from losing two seemingly winnable elections, produces much speculation about the party’s next choice of nominee.

2016 – GOP front-runner and former Vice President Jeb Bush faces a tough fight for the nomination against surprise opposition of outsiders trying to change the party…

-Danny Grosso

 

An epochal rock

or lode of stone

held once, a legend

or city of old

that fashioned kings

from the meek and bold

and held the peace

each in its fold.

This grand design

later sold, gone to decay

just

fell

away.

 

-Danny Grosso

When the spectre arose

t’was not from a lie

but a truth that is told

when the jaw’s set awry.

The reap of what’s sown

is the natural way

and a fire so lit

may just go astray.

 

-Danny Grosso