Woody Creek, 2010
(with apologies to William Wordsworth and John Milton)

Thompson! You shouldn't have quit the scene, man:

Amerika needs you: she is a zoo

Of rabid freaks: ether, Wild Turkey, glue,

Motorbike, a Glock's cold heft in your hand,

None can salve or soothe or save this lost land,

Or heal it. We are done for: Dolt, Yahoo,

Citizen. Oh! fuck us up, doctor, do;

And give us fear, loathing, acid, a plan.

Your mojo was like a cherry bomb flushed

Down the john; your voice a coyote's wail:

Mistah Kurtz in the Rockies, a grim tale

Sparking from typewriter keys; one of us

But badder, bolder, and yet, your voice hushed,

We listen further, on or off the bus.

Jim Clark is the Elizabeth H. Jordan Professor of Southern Literature and Chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. He was born in Byrdstown, Tennessee, and educated at Vanderbilt University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Denver. His books include Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany, Dancing on Canaan's Ruins, Handiwork, and Fable in the Blood: The Selected Poems of Byron Herbert Reece. He has also released a CD of original poems and Appalachian folk music, Buried Land, and two CDs, Wilson and Words to Burn, with his folk-rock band The Near Myths. His second solo CD, The Service of Song, released in 2010, features his musical settings of twelve poems by the north Georgia "farmer-poet" Byron Herbert Reece.