Electric God Rays

Electric God Rays
© Surazeus
2026 10 11

When I was a young boy in Fort Worth, Texas 
we always ate Roman Meal Bread for lunch, 
with slice of Nuteena fried in the pan, 
so I would picture myself as Apollo 
strumming the golden lyre of Mercury 
while soldiers maintained peace of our empire. 

While I was attending the first grade 
at Morningside Elementary School, 
we rode the bus to the bread factory 
on Summit Avenue in Fort Worth, Texas 
that Ninnie Baird founded in her back yard, 
and watched them bake bread on conveyor belts. 

Sitting at the wood table in the kitchen 
every morning before going to school, 
I smoothed peanut butter on slice of bread, 
then gooped strawberry jam with gentle care, 
which I placed in the small brown paper sack 
with the monkey tail of my last name Craig. 

I remember riding our red Volkswagen 
through the debris-littered streets of Forth Worth 
one rain-wet morning of electric sun 
after hippies demonstrated all night 
against the brutal war in Vietnam, 
and staring at a mattress that was burned. 

In early morning hours before dawn 
when my mother drove us to the daycare, 
I heard some guy on the radio sing 
Bye, bye, Miss American Pie, I drove 
my chevy to the levy but the levy 
was dry, them good old American boys. 

That song still echoes in my heart today 
and vibrates in every song I compose 
which rings in waves of subtle prophecy 
to shake foundation of cruel tyranny 
so we can rebuild our democracy 
after long autumn of the patriarch. 

I fail learning to sing with the Quaint Voice 
prized by School of Domestic Quietude 
where poets contemplate their fraught childhoods 
as if we are frazzled psychiatric patients 
with sponge brains zapped by electric god rays 
as incarnation of Phoebus on Earth. 

I can no longer find in grocery stores 
orange bags with Roman Meal Bread for lunch, 
so I strum lyre of Mercury and sing 
about the fall of empires when cruel tyrants 
seize control over the mans of production 
till we follow Liberty up from Hell.