Dirt Dirt

Dirt Dirt

Dirt dirt give me the dirt
the scoops the shovels.
How about in spades or
trowels? Plowed under
or dug up. Come on

I know you're a mine
of information a veritable
quarry no a canyon
or is it a gulch? A hunch
of gulches. An arroyo
of Hey! Yo! Wassup?

What's down! Why
the grave look it's dark
so dark I can't see
down here in the catacombs
the worm tunnels the filth
the stench of Verdun

the bombed out craters
of rock-ridden backyards
where countless children
played after school maybe
two or three while school

was in session. Under
the fingernails. In the pores.
It takes a scrubbing brush
to see he's really a white
kid a good kid clean through

and through though he won't
eat his brassicas. No! And you
know why? Too gritty mommy.
Too crunchy and dirty he cries.
Silly boy she says. Eat your

greens your sprouts your spinach
your broccoli calabrese and kale
too not to mention sparrow grass
stalks in the night pushing their
way through the old man's
well-intentioned mounds of earth.

Soil he says. Not dirt.