The hemp t-shirt
next to you
at the rally
bears a fair trade
coffee stain.
The hemp t-shirt next to you
on the other side
has a Mayan glyph on the back:
a seated god laughing
balanced on a single point
while a bulky base supports him.
You have just finished an iced mocha
and tossed the cup away, mindful of
stain danger. You burned
your own hemp shirt with a stray ember of hydro
not too long ago and don’t want
to look more like a hippie than you already do,
with your carefully cultivated three-day beard
moisturized by pure vegetable oils grown
somewhere on a plantation in Guatemala
tended by someone
descended from someone
who designed a pyramid
a thousand years ago.

Your’e here today because
where you live there’s a pyramid too
and at the top of the pyramid
there’s rage because
people are crossing
a government line, and everyone’s forgetting
that the crossing’s not an exception,
the line is the exception,
the line is something new
that Maya and Aztec and lots of others
have nevertheless crossed and recrossed
that land for years
looking for a way to stay alive.
Today they’re cleaning cars, raising garages
and clean organic vegetables, local food
for global shoppers
who own reckless amounts of things.

You know all this,
and while you can admit that you are one
of the reckless ones
at least you can say today you are thinking
of your footprint, your
sweatshop free footprint.
You looked for a recycling bin for that cup you tossed,
after all, and even though there wasn’t one
you figure you get to stand
righteous on the sandy earth today
denouncing the pyramid
on behalf of the children of
Maya and Aztecs.

And so you do it, you raise the banner high
for the Cause,
and once you get home
you coast
among the CNN and BBC and Google News sites,
burning the midnight Venezuelan oil
looking for one proof shot of yourself
holding that banner that proclaims
the downfall of all pyramids
even as you stood on top of one
because you convinced yourself
that’s where the banner
would be most easily seen.

Yes, that’s you. And you look
good.

The Maya
once tore the hearts from captives
and bathed their pyramids in red
even as they clocked the heavens,
carved down the jungles,
developed perfect time,
and scryed the end of their world
from far above their sticky
plazas. Once they knew what was coming
they left what they built behind
and the green came back
with life full and lush
from long years of blood
and swiftly rolled over the proud stone.
Do you suppose that
years later the Aztecs,
on the eve of the Conquest,
knowing the world was changing
but not expecting the end,
do you think they pitied the Maya,
thought of them as children
while sipping bitter chocolate,
standing about smugly and preening
in the steep angled light of their evening?

In a corner booth at a party
a guy who’s a friend of a friend
tells me:

“One night some years ago
I made calls
to two different crisis hotlines.

The first call,
I shit you not I was on hold
for ten minutes.

The second call, I asked the counselor
for a place I could go
for emergency meds. He told me the story

of how Michael Jordan and the Bulls
had to be beaten by the Pistons
before finding the drive they needed

to become champions,
and what I needed was to see
that this was my time to find

my inner drive.
I thanked him when I hung up on him
because

there was no way
I was going to end my life
with either a bad punchline

or a sports metaphor
as the last thing I ever heard,
and I’ve made it my business since

never to stick around
longer than is polite
when the phone plays me sad music

or someone who claims they care
proves they’ve got nothing
but game to share.”

On TV a woman
having a physical
blurts “INEEDANHIVTEST!”

in the middle of hearing about
her blood pressure, and then
twists her lips into a half smile

and sighs as if she wants to say
something about how much better
she feels now.

She’s apparently not afraid
as much as she is embarrassed
and a little worried,

and I think we’re supposed
to laugh at the look on her face
and the tone of her voice.

I think
this is supposed to be
progress, and perhaps

it is,
if what this means is that
someone is going feel better

blurting out
how they want to live
a long time, or how

it’s better to know the truth
than to wonder
like so many others did.

Still,
I can’t laugh
because it’s taken so long

to get here, to get to a point
where someone bothers to think
that maybe a pretty blonde woman

in a late night ad
might make someone else want to ask,
to blurt something out

so few once thought
someone like her
would ever need to ask.

Thinking about all those people
who never asked, who asked
too late, who kept out of the doctor’s office

because of the overwhelming fear
of what they might hear, or who never
believed they could need to hear

answers
to that
unimagined question,

I can’t laugh
even though the woman on TV
seemed ready to laugh

two seconds after the camera was turned off,
who might have gone home and
because it felt OK to say it then

might have gone
to the doctor
the very next day.

And I can’t laugh even though
someone else might have done
the very same thing the very next day

because a funny commercial
made asking the question
easier.

I suppose it is progress that
I get to think this way
about something so simple

as asking, learning the truth,
smiling to oneself just for asking
for the truth;

I guess it’s progress that
someone like me,
who has never felt that need to ask,

who maybe should have asked
at some point
instead of counting on luck and statistics,

can sit here smugly and quibble
over whether
it’s appropriate

to laugh at such things
when all that matters is ensuring
that the question is asked and answered.