There’s a shooting —
maybe at a school or 
a night club —

or an injustice — rights
being taken from someone
or a swift deportation and
separation from family —

or a scandal — a sex thing
or maybe it’s espionage
or a mix of both —

and while shaking your head
and exclaiming your now-routine
amazement and shock 
at such goings on

you are shocked and amazed
all over again when your head
falls right off
and rolls across the ground
for what seems like an eon
before it comes to rest
against a Civil War replica cannon
being used in a reenactment 

and without warning your head
gets rammed down the barrel 
and in a blast of sulfur and flame
you are flying toward the other side

your loose and empty head
having become someone else’s ammo
for this drawn out massacre called
The American Experience
and you realize

if you had just had your head
tied a little more tightly 
to something solid
like an understanding of history
to hold it down
instead of being so floaty
with reaction and awe at
the everyday more of the same

you might have avoided this

you might have at least been 
the one firing the cannon

you might at best have been
the one who stopped it from firing

This country once,
to some or perhaps most,
looked solid and white from above,

much like a blank paper, perhaps like
the back of a page in a history
text book or the back of a facsimile
of a foundational document,

or most of all, like a sea of deadly cold
covered by an ice pack.

When the Captains of Industry
and Control finally decided 
it had gone on long enough and
brought in an Icebreaker,
when they finally chose to lose the illusion
and let everyone in on the open secret,
when they decided they simply
didn’t care anymore about hiding the truth,
started breaking the ice wide enough apart
to make their greed work less difficult
and thus made it so folks could see
deep cold ocean beneath,
killer ocean that had always been there,

it staggered those
who’d been fighting drowning all their lives
while stuffed below the ice forever and a day

to see how the broken floes
who’d thought they were solid and safe
gave up their volition and sense
to get behind the Icebreaker itself
as it portrayed itself as
a savior of the great white pack,
who thought they’d make it when the ship
got through and showed
how thin the ice had always been,

how the solidity had been fragile from the start
and the fact that it hid the cruel sea under it
was the only reason it had been allowed
to last as long as it had.

I

The tyrant is not himself magical.
The tyrant is nothing himself but
the result of a spell.

II

There are some who say
his name is magical. They say
he cannot remain a tyrant
if we do not
say his name.

III

There are some
who call him
by his grandfather’s name.

They
agree with the tyrant
that some names
are less powerful
for their foreign origin.

IV

The tyrant is
utterly himself. The tyrant
is always present, in the moment,
a bruise or fresh gash.

V

Dare we admit that
something in us is thrilled
that the tyrant has unmasked
the perpetual tyranny
that preceded him here?

VI

The tyrant’s mood
is easy in the morning,
easy in the evening. The tyrant’s mood
is always easier to read
than predict. 

VII

The tyrant walks among men
as if he were thin and everything
about him were golden. He 
walks among women as if
he needs, when among them,
to stretch an arm, to reach out.

VIII

The long game, the short game.
The endless hours riding around
outdoors. The sun on his scalp,
yet the tyrant will not believe
in the sun.

IX

While wringing their hands
over the tyrant’s deeds and words

some fall into a shadow
and never come out again.

X

A tyrant, any tyrant,
must breathe the same air
as everyone else, but

more of it. This tyrant
draws like a furnace, 
chimney gone wild with flame.

XI

There are not yet enough songs
to suck air from under the tyrant’s wings.

XII

The tyrant sits up late, 
speaks to the dark, never dreams
without acting out the dream.

XIII

What a tyrant does, says,
what a tyrant is, is nothing new.
What’s new: this tyrant 

on a branch above the schoolyard,
staring at our children.  This tyrant
in the doorway of the bedroom, drooling
over us.  This tyrant bedecked

in a throng of blackbirds
adoring him, waiting for us
to take our hands

from our eyes.

The grand mistake
of thinking you can do this in short order,
the grand mistake that gets you going.

Burning through shoe leather, and 
having the willingness to face
eventual bullets.

The entertained thought
of your own need for 
eventual bullets.

Shaking it off, then
letting it come back to rest
near the ancestors’ graves, if needed.

Shoe leather, again.
Cardboard for signs,
short money shared for bail.

A promise to take care of 
kids if…A promise to keep going
if…promises to…keep promises…

Wary eyes
on supposed alliances
made from necessity.

Hunger, thirst,
comfort, vinegar, bandanas,
holy lies, selective deceit, stealth.

End of the world as we know it.
End of the world we don’t.
Lying down to sleep in a world no one knows.

Hope? Honor? Success?
Don’t hold your breath looking for it
in a mirror. A telescope, maybe.