Random atoms
brought me here this morning
last night tumbled me into a phone call
with someone I never met
who was sobbing on the other end
and thanking me for making a phone call
about something that made them think
and feel their way past where they were at
into a space for holding others up
and there I was with random atoms
on my cheeks
humbled for I felt I’d done so little
yet somehow it was a huge thing
and I hung up and took a breath
then made another phone call
random atoms aligning
pulsing out
a maybe
a yes
a no
a no one’s home
I keep at it
thinking maybe
we’re going to be OK
Tag Archives: political poems
Phone Bank
Becoming A Man
Indeed, I am sorry
to have been
what I refuse to name,
but then again, without that name,
I can refuse to admit
what I am
and if what I am
can remain unnamed
long enough
it can disappear as if
it never existed;
if it never existed
I may be something
else again and I will take
that name and become
that man, so I refuse
the name I do not want
and it floats away
to land on another man,
one I can safely abhor
because he could not refuse it
when it was hung upon him.
Somehow
my refusal endured
and stood up
and was honored and
buttressed and coddled
and my preferred name
became my own. I became
a man who refused
his true name and
when they call it after me
in the streets or the courts
or the legislature, I can turn
and say again
that’s not me, I would never.
Secure in saying
whatever I want
to my accusers,
even to the point
of scolding myself
when I recall what I was
in dead night while staring
at the red movie behind
my eyes, scolding, saying
no,
I never, no,
I am not.
Translating
Morning.
I’m terrified
of myself.
Last night
I dreamed again
of lead and steel
speaking truth to power,
speaking directly to its faces
and those visions
won’t leave my head
now that I’m awake.
I thought I’d forgotten
that language.
It’s so ancient, so
differently civilized.
It hurts my tongue
a little (although a little
less each
subsequent time I test
it against the edge
of the moment, even when
I can taste blood after).
I am remembering
how to use it
to call up those
ancestors long gone,
those once
so fluent in it
that while there must have been mornings
when they must have risen
to similar terror,
they still raised their voices
of lead and steel
and spoke
deadly truth to their
enemies
because to hold it back
was to die.
Morning.
I’m awake.
Afraid but compensating,
getting used to
forming thoughts
from dreams,
translating.
They Did It
They did it to the sky —
look up at the jail-bars
from their planes and
factory stacks, cross bars
from bomb craters and
piles of smoking Brown bodies.
They did it to the earth —
look out upon the jail-bars
of roads and pipelines,
cross bars of damaged towns,
ghost landfills, sick-making farms,
trails of brown Brown blood.
They did it to the sea —
look to the horizon over jail-bars
of diesel spew, acres of death and corpse-fish,
cross bar drift nets
and garbage in patches as thick
as the brown oil sucked from Brown lands.
Don’t ask me
who they are.
You know.
You nod. You agree.
You consume
and enable. You
look
into the sky
marveling
at the color
smoke brings out
of the sunset. You
look
across the land
and thrill to
the ease
with which you can
cross it. You
look
at the ocean
and imagine
yourself a pirate
adrift beyond law
and rules. You
don’t understand
how they could ruin
a world
that seems like it was made
just to be captured
on a white page.
Civil Society
In order to examine
all sides of a foul debate
I turned myself inside out
When I was done
I reversed the reversal
but little went back into place
I look the same
except for some weariness
and caution in my eye
but my heart is banging
(perhaps against
some maladjusted rib)
It hurts like a bell
close to cracking
while my gut isn’t easy at all
keeps twisting and poking
in anticipation of danger
that may be real
or may be a product of
all my contortions to try and be
civil and respectful of despicable men
their crusted ideals
their crooked deity
their tumbling glory dreams
I bothered to listen
and try to talk
and now I’m withered
and all my innards
are slipping around
trying to keep me
alive long enough
to do something
to make me forget
that I once deluded myself
into thinking that inverting myself
for them
was a courtesy
when in fact it was
a slow suicide
begun in the name of
a civil society
that has never existed
Preliminaries
Shut up, shut up,
shut up, shut up.
Red talk.
Oxygen theft.
Blood mockery.
Beerhall chants.
Shut up, we said
to whoever that was
yelling over there.
Shut up, shut up,
we are trying to breathe.
Shut up, they said
to whoever they thought
was yelling over here.
Shut up, shut up,
we are trying to sleep.
Shut up, shut up,
our fingers are barking.
Shut up, shut up,
they slap at their screens.
Shut up, they said, shut up,
shut up,
and we said it right back,
shut up, shut up, shut up,
shut up.
Shut up, we said
when they said shut up or
I’ll give you a war
that you won’t soon forget.
Now it’s been said
and they won’t take it back.
Now it’s put up
or shut up, shut up
and put ’em up.
When they said what they said
they fired the first shots
and when we said what we said
we were dodging the bullets.
When they said
what they said
it was old and terrible.
We’d seen it before
so we said what we said
because we didn’t believe
they could say it again
without being made
to shut up, shut up;
civility be damned,
we’ve seen this before
and no one seems to think
it can happen here
but it can and it has
and it is and it will
so shut up, shut up,
shut the hell up,
shut the fuck up
and aim
for the mouth.
Sharks
Near the close-by ocean
folks are terrified.
It’s brand new,
it’s unheard of:
sharks.
Once in a while
they break surface
in front of oily tourists
and apprehensive natives.
Blood in the water,
the warmer water,
the transformed water.
The fear
is not only about them
killing picturesque seals.
Not any more.
Look at them.
They’re here and that means
we’re all over;
soon the sharks
will learn
how to leap, then fly.
When it happens,
if you look carefully
at the shadow under
a jumping shark
you will see faces
you’ll recognize.
Even if that
particular animal
is not feeding
and has other places
to go, when it lands
upon something you love,
that will be death.
People on the beach
sit in fear of what’s out there
in water that used to be
ice, their heads tumbling with
movie possibilities, scent
of blood, empty hips
and shoulders, chunks
of identity swallowed
and gone.
Sharks, they know
better. They prepare
to jump, to fly.
Calling out to all:
water’s poison,
air is fine.
For now.
After The Orgy Of His Ending
he was laid out
like a meal
on a picnic table.
How swiftly he was
torn and butchered!
If you lay a feast
before some folks
they settle right in
and devour it.
I’m certain
he was spoiled,
spoiled early,
spoiled rotten;
I never could have thought
to drag a tooth over him.
Seeing him
picked clean like this,
I worry most about those
who consumed him, that they
are what they ate, that they
will turn rotten deep inside
if they were not already.
It’s not their cannibalism
that shocked me as much
as, knowing how dark
his meat was, how readily
they took him in and made him
a part of their very bones.
They live
right next door
with their bloody jaws
and their endless,
deathless hunger.
Adjacent
I’ve got a friend
who weeps when called out
for racist words and actions.
Who sobs out loud
when tapped on the shoulder
with a simple, “excuse me, but…”
Who appeals to the masses
for absolution from
wee slips of the tongue and
itty-bitty sins of omission or,
sometimes,
commission.
I feel so bad for them
I’ve created
an easier term to use.
I say,
“You’re not being racist…
friend…
it’s more like…
you are…
racism-adjacent.”
As in, of course
you’re not,
but you share a fence
with it.
As in, of course
you’re not,
but your apartments
share common spaces
where racism
plays Kid Rock so loud
you can’t hear
that nice Justin Timberlake.
As in, of course
you’re not,
but you work
a community garden together;
racism grows weed, you grow
cannabis.
As in, of course,
racism doesn’t know any better.
As in, of course,
you certainly know better.
You’re not racist,
just racism-adjacent.
Sit near it at work.
Talk to it at lunch.
Engage it in debate
online, listen to it
respectfully, indignantly
at PTA meetings,
tut-tut it in private,
slip into silence
when it’s next to you
in the elevator,
the supermarket,
the voting booths.
Of course, you
are not like that.
Of course you would never
although you sympathize
with how hard
it must be sometimes to miss
falling into that
what with all the
provocations
and you know better
but the economy pushes
people and
you would never sacrifice
anyone’s right to speak —
Enough. Friend, listen:
I’m so sorry I called you
racist. It must have been
the lighting, the darkness,
the nearness of
the real racist
in the room — sorry,
I meant to say
“racist-adjacent”
of course but somehow
I forgot. Sin of
omission on my part —
I forgot the word
I’m supposed to use.
Salt And Fire
Originally posted June 2017.
There are places on Earth
so soaked in hate that
the only moral thing to do
(after finding new places
for people to live)
is to burn every scrap of wood
from furniture
to framing, fill in every
foundation, break up
all the roads that lead
into and out of town, then
salt the ground sterile.
Every day you hear
of places so poisoned
they should live on only
as a shocked memory
of a country of horror stories
and nightmares.
I do not say this lightly.
Every town is someone’s home and
has at least a modicum
of love clinging to it. I do not
know how to make hate disappear,
and perhaps I have become hate
when I think these things —
perhaps I should
burn myself,
have a friend
roll my smoking corpse in salt
and bury me in barren ground.
Look around. Something
has to be done
and it is hard to believe
that it will not
require fire
and salt.
Apex Predator
In spite of
His reckless
and eccentric
reputation.
In spite of all the rumors
spinning out
in a wake behind Him
as he proceeds.
With no regard for
how He steps upon
smaller beings or
fragile footing.
With a wink
at His handiwork
and a smile for
His damages.
Whistling
His songs,
reading His books,
watching His shows.
Everybody knows
His name. No one knows
what He does
behind the screen it provides.
Or everyone knows.
Or enough know and
they keep it to themselves
because He is good
to them. Good for them.
Good enough
that His walk
is its own excuse.
His work
is justification
enough. After all
this is how
all of this was built.
Built by Him.
Built for hunting.
Built to drain away any blood.
Bootstraps
Born in a tunnel
looking up. There is
so much
light above. There’s a ladder
that begins
above me, higher than I can jump,
the low rung
shining like a sword unsheathed
against me
and everyone else down here.
I don’t have
the strength to climb to it
even if there
were purchase to do so.
I’m so hungry.
We all are, having built small fires
and roasted
our bootstraps into tough meat
long ago.
The House Falling
This is a house
falling and
so many under the roof
will be compressed
into somebody’s unfortunate
consequence
and now
and then an escapee will
be asked, “wasn’t it worth it
to be out from under”
and they
won’t know what to say
with their flattened faces
grown long and broken from
the trauma of having been
inside the rotten house
as it fell.
This is a house
falling and
all over the neighborhood
bricks are being thrown into
the yards and through
the windows and
look at all the people
bleeding and calling out
for shelter and protection and
they are asked
“isn’t it nice
to have light from where
that nasty building used to be”
and they won’t understand
after being blinded by
flying glass.
This is a house
falling and
noise and brown dust
are choking and strangling
people who were hoping
to be heard in the
stillness after its collapse
and they are asked “are you
better off now that it’s not
holding you back” and
they try to answer in the
affirmative for those
who were outside already
and missed all the damage
from the moment the damned
house fell, the kids and others
who will benefit in the absence
of the fallen house
while the ones who were inside
and knew it was going to fall
accept death and the weight of debris as
the price of someone else’s hope.
Prediction
What’s become clear is that
your enemies have the easy stuff
figured out and countered and
that’s at least in part because
you yawp like a puppy instead of
growling or better still coming at them
in silence with cunning
and the strongest weapons you have
loose and swinging in your hands.
Your best bet
is to keep your mouth shut,
mostly. Don’t expose
the back of your throat
where your best weapons
hang — not the throwaways
you store on the tip of the tongue
but the sharpest edges,
the thickest batons,
the rifles with the laser sights.
You won’t listen.
You will die pretending
we are not at war.
We are not there yet,
you will say, even as you fall
bleeding into the sand.
We are not there yet,
you will say, as you die.
Edging Your Lawn
You edge your lawn
by trimming off
the parts of it
that intrude upon
the borders of
cement walks,
well mulched
beds of flowers, and
clusters of
hedges and shrubs.
You edge your lawn
although you know
how unnecessary
your lawn is.
You know, you should turn it over
and make it into a garden.
Do it to feed yourself,
your family,
your people.
You know
what you should do
but instead,
you edge your lawn.
You edge your lawn
with small swords.
You edge your lawn
to hold back a riot,
to stem chaos.
Clean lines,
segregated spaces,
perfect delineations,
evenly spaced boxes
for life.
Your lawn
pushes you
to keep it pretty,
serving that
which is useless.
You edge your lawn
in spite of
how hungry you are.
Dark Matter 