I will be broken
by the demise of
this country, 
of course. How could
I not be — it made me.
I can only modify what I am
just so far — cannot 
transform entirely. Not now,
not this late. 

You tell me,

of course you can change.
Of course you can shift yourself 
aside of the tumbling 
stones and statues, the smoking
crash of the ruins — you can
survive and even thrive.
You can be something else.

No. I know better, and I know
even more than better —
I know a limited amount of best.

Best for me
is to stand open handed under
the looming wall of the thing
that was built for me and those 
like me and catch the rubble
as it begins to crumble,

try to keep it from crushing
the ones without safety
or a place to hide.

It will take me eventually
but I will be damned if 
I let it take anyone I have
the ability to save.

An article 
on modern architecture
laments how ugly 
it all is, compares and contrasts
Dubai and Singapore skylines
to the streets of ancient Italian
cities, mocks physics-defying towers
of steel and glass
set into city blocks worldwide
at nearly impossible angles and 
presents the street map of Paris
and a collage of pictures
of Roman aqueducts
as the perfection of human
spirit made real, weeps at how much
grace and soul we have pissed away
on such monstrosities, blames
every disease of our society
on the retreat from such classical norms —

and here I am
thinking of broken temples
in India and blown up mosques in Iraq;
of what Timbutu must have been
in its prime and how mounds 
across North America still undulate
in harmony with the landscape
wherever they have not been bulldozed;
thinking of six grandfathers dynamited 
for four presidents; 

I want to say a lot of things
about destruction and rebirth and
the relevance of the past to the present

and they all just come out at once
in words I can never fully mean
as to say them is
to condemn myself as well
but I must, I must:

fuck you, old Europe, old head,
no more than small peninsula of vast Asia,
skull cap above the head of Africa,
made rich by the long plunder of the Americas:

yield your time.

How to be a white American
this year: shift your stance

and consider the view of the drain
from inside the drain.

Think of a sunrise viewed from here
where sunset’s in progress. Bend down

and smell the thrown rocks, the landed bricks,
tear gas floating across the soil.

Get out of the hold
your skin has on you: armor

you may have counted on,
tattooed spells of protection

you say you never knew existed — 
and if you admitted that you knew,

you denied
that you could read them.

It’s not fun here right now.
It’s not going to be fun,

not supposed to be fun.
Never fear: you will someday

dine and screw
and find joy in small things

as always. Just don’t 
try to shift back

to where you were standing
before all this:

the ground there won’t be as solid
as it used to appear.

Over here we have a chart
explaining how the System
self-regulates and does its work.

Over there we have a chart
explaining how the people
who run the System are in fact
part of another, Deeper System
underneath and behind the System.

Over there — a different there —
there’s a chart explaining
how the Systems one can see
are not the True Systems. How 
another Ultimate System entirely is running
and no other System exists at all
and we cannot know the Ultimate System
because, because…

And there we are, pointing
at our preferred charts, screaming
at the adherents of systems 
other than our own:

Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
Jeffrey Epstein didn’t
kill himself. Jeffrey Epstein isn’t dead.
Jeffrey Epstein’s moldy body was used
to breed the coronavirus. 
It’s China. It’s Russia.
It must be reptilians. No,
that’s silly. it’s gotta be the Grays.
Follow the golden
showers, the money,
the long game.

Follow it all
at the same time, spinning
and pointing at charts
until you’re dizzy — 

all the while
someone’s picking your pockets
and chuckles while putting up
chart upon chart upon chart
for you to argue over.
Charts,
they tell themselves,
are our business, and business 
is good,
while all we ever say in return is,

which chart do we put them on?

Am not and will never be
a pleased citizen of a displeasing culture

where life has been tuned to enforced dissatisfaction
and to wanting so much more than is good for you

Where all cues are taken from the long-ago dead
and to freestyle beyond them is anathema-death

Am not and will never be traditional
in the sense of the word that means toe-the-line

where there are different lines for different people
and we are backed up snarling across them at others

Where we drown in the smarmy the snark and the witless
and stare at the sun till we burn out our TV-dulled eyes

Am not and will never be pure at my center
in this place where percentage and quota are God

If you are more of this more of that
Or less than required in all of your portions

they set you aside and remand you to hell
Where the fire’s burned out and you shiver to pieces

Am not and will never accept this as normal
Am not and will never lie down and sleep well

in this place that might have been something at one time
Maybe for ten minutes or maybe fifteen

a long time ago in the head of a child
who lay down and drifted through patriot dreams

then awoke in this place and once they could see it
have never had rest for a whole night since then