What's Wrong With Kansas?

What’s Wrong With Kansas?

—for William Allen White

One day I may—

Touch what’s wrong

The small skulls—

The lonely Flint Hills

The stark fenceposts—

The Godawful hush…

Z Bar Ranch

There’s no life higher—

Than the tall prairie grasses

The wind bending—

Everything in one direction

The cattle know where—

They are better than we do

Driving out past Strong City—

Past the Z Bar ruins

Like being mailed into space—

This thin, silly message

The Artist

—for John Evans

The obscure moon—

Lighting an obscure world

Where we ourselves—

Wereneverquite ourselves

And didn’t want to be—

Nor did we have to

Then getting outta town—

Desiring some freedom

The motive for coming out—

Shrinking from the creeps

The weight of prairie gloom—

The ABC’s of being real

Face Lift

And then there are—

All the other faces

The ones that needed—

A facelift worse than me

The faceless faces—

Of unimportant people

So jealous of anything—

That’s not flat

They are jealous faces—

Fly Over State faces

Stoic, gothic Americana—

Fenceposts in the pastures

Touring Emporia

1

Tragedy isn’t Kansas—

It’s the people stuck there

Scrupulously stale—

Boring with quiet desperation

The tragedy is cultural—

Mysteriously hiding individuals

People dragging their—

Shadows down Commercial Street

Some go south down to—

Soden’s Grove and play baseball

Others keep going to Bird Bridge—

To murder their wives down there

2

Others travel to Olpe—

Along desolate Highway 99

The smart ones go north—

To ponder the Sunken Gardens

One hundred fifty years of—

So-called Higher Education

Others stick to Sixth—

Going east to Toad’s Hollow

Or west past EHS—

The new Santa Fe Motel

Convention Center Hotel—

But who wants to come?

What’s in Emporia—

For convening conventions?

3

Some go west—

Past Iowa Beef and Tyson’s

The smell of Auschwitz—

Pervading the Streets of Elms

Out past the Roller Rink ruins—

Past the VFW and Truck Stop

Bug-eyed with amazement—

Those glory-holes in the walls!!!

Out past Stauffer’s statues—

Giant old limestone Fenceposts

A gaunt way of saying goodbye—

Driving fast to get outta town