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Viva Outlaw Earth

from Kill Starlings by Christian Drake

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lyrics

Birdwatching in the city is not a sport for the weak.
I’ve dodged junkyard dogs to get a better look at a dove,
and the other day in the Bosque I scared off a great blue heron
when I stepped on an empty vial of crack.
Listen, I’d love to be out in the virgin wilderness
communing with the Great Turtle Spirit or whatever,
but I’m what happens when Mark Trail spends his gas money on beer
and doesn’t get weekends off from the coffeeshop,
so I’m getting down with Mother Earth
out behind the WalMart.

At the cusp of every city, the forest knocks on the backdoor
of the Barrio, and you can find me there,
where No Hunting signs are motheaten with bullet holes,
where teenagers come to smoke pot and their little brothers
come to build kick-ass bike jumps, where generations
of hardworking lowlifes come to smash beer bottles,
so the clearing becomes a meadow of glass
with a million sharp blossoms of sunlight.
I’m birdwatching from the hobo camps of the world,
where the trees are spiderwebbed with plastic bags
and the car drunk-driven into the ravine twelve years ago
has been repo’d by wildflowers.

While we fight to keep the Earth free
for the wolves and the whooping cranes,
let’s never forget to save enough wilderness
for the outlaws.
We need a wildlife refuge for the fugitives,
the drunkards, and the trespassers,
because the best way to protect good land
is to put bad men in it.

Viva this outlaw Earth.
Viva the hideouts of panthers and thieves.
Viva Pancho Villa’s rattlesnake paradise
and Robin Hood’s forest of laughter.
Viva the broad red borderlands that conceal immigrants
zigzagging under stars and Joshua Trees, hands hungry for work.
Viva the bootlegger’s swamps, and the city slickers lost in them,
fumbling for moonshine on a moonless night.
Viva the guerrilla terrorists
of the American revolution
hunting redcoats in the jungles of Massachusetts.
Viva the midnight skinnydippers at the reservoir.
Viva rednecks, y’all,
because they know more about Nature than you do,
because they siphon it through the barrel of a double-gauge.
Viva the illegal campfires warming illegal hands by the riverbanks,
and the endangered snow leopard pausing to sniff the moon
among the caves of Al Qaeda.

When the cops and the taxman want to find you,
they will bring you back to the city,
give you an address in the projects
and tell you to show up for jury duty.
They will boil down the forest with Agent Orange
so they can find you by airplane,
kill the buffalo to starve you out,
and if you run for the hills, they will stripmine the hills,
because they know
the last refuge of the free will always be the outskirts,
the badlands, the sweet lawless scorpion planet
where the golf course ends,
and I will be there,
birdwatching from the edge of the junkyard,
grateful there are is enough wilderness in the world
for us to still be wild.

credits

from Kill Starlings, released January 26, 2012

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Christian Drake Dhaka Division, Bangladesh

Christian Drake is a six-time National Poetry Slam team member and has performed on three National Poetry Slam Finals stages. Originally from New England, he bas been a host of popular slams, poetry shows and burlesques in San Francisco, CA and Albuquerque, NM. He's best known for his often loud, erotic, and political nature poetry. He currently a science teacher in the New England wilderness. ... more

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