for Towny Anderson
Corporate ski
Corporate sky
Corporate investor eye
It was the disembodied ‘80s
& money was moving in
By the time
McRedeye hitched
a ride To-Hell-U-Ride
the upwardly mobile were
on a downhill slide
Laying out lines
for Christendom’s
high peaks
Even the West End slickrockers
strung out on uranium
& crystal meth
Calling it Scrapple
Pig’s foot. A sow’s ear
This
Southern Rocky Mountain
Sacrifice Area
turned
funky black op
Lalaland for urban has-beens
& maverick haven’t-beens
let out to grass
Valley cows
milking the elks’ meadows
New Yorker cartoons
in dazzling Dali frames
All spilling over in freebox
funkadelic
Woodsies on pine sap
Yuppies gone Gucci
Peaceniks & stock brokers
Back then
uranium was still top dog
on the county’s economic totem pole
Anything seemed better
than another big stick bully boy orgy of
extractive looting
the 19th Century called “striking it rich”
where you dig up old weath
Mill it. Defang it
& then haul it away to distant markets
as booty or bounty
Today we use a gondola
Bring ‘em here
for a time share film fest
best of show visit
& then send them packing
And yet, surely
better trophy homes
than ore trucks & abandoned adits
or heads on palace walls
But what remains
after the tourist industrialization of place
is, after all, far more invidious
than even the incandescent Bulkeley Wells
could have dreamed of
Lighting up the San Juans
with technicolor centerfold real estate ads
like BIG CIGARS
