You,
half-unbuckled,
verging upon
dropping all your armor,
ready to take on what is coming
from out of those dark mists
before you, those charcoal clouds
boiling from eternal battles;
you,
half-unarmed,
edge dulled, bow unstrung,
arrows blunted, still
with your stance set to stolid,
holding fast before
what is coming toward you;
you,
trying to recall every word of advice
about how to meet this enemy
with no toxins in your grasp,
no arms to bear against it;
you,
trusting you cannot fall
or fail except by failing
to face it, even if it kills you,
even if it takes you almost
serenely, almost with grace,
lifting you into its maw
and swallowing you;
you,
refusing to let yourself
be absorbed, digested,
making it spit you out
or choke upon the weight
you carry with you into war;
you,
unbuckled, unshackled,
naked now as it approaches, still no
shake in you, no shiver,
nothing but the unsheathing
of what sits at your core,
the one thing it cannot surround
or destroy: the essence
of what has answered
throughout history
whenever your indomitable name
has been called.
Tag Archives: political poems
You Half-Unbuckled
Getting Closer
When they first came
they measured themselves
against the trees, found themselves
less than acceptable; shrugged, cut down
the trees, built homes, built forts,
slid the scraps into their mouths
like toothpicks chewed solely
for the soothing taste
of wood, of victory.
When they’d been here for a little while
they came out of homes and forts
to witness and approve
beatings, burnings, massacres,
displaced thousands marching from
their homes, footprints freezing into memories
in reddening snow, baking into
blushing sands; they slid all that
into their mouths, pills to be swallowed
for prevention, for nourishment,
for their great peace of mind.
When they had been here for a while longer
they began to imagine themselves
measuring up, full-rooted here, seeded here,
forest primeval; shrugged, cut down memories
of those who’d been here all along,
slid those names into their maps,
their family trees, called them their own.
One day I came out of my home
and saw that no matter how much
I mourned departures and raged over
shed blood, I was now mostly one of them
thanks to the long “whatever” and “so what”
of how casually they’d cut down and consumed
my place, my people, my places.
When I’d known that for a while
I chewed off a piece
of me, a huge piece of me as one might
chew off an arm or leg, a piece I saw only dimly
as it disappeared, as I left it on the path
and moved on, a wraith, with a mystery
taste of ashes, wood rot, metal flake
on my tongue; then I shrugged,
told myself I was getting closer to an end of this road
and said I was long overdue for that
and lightening my load in such a savage way
was a departure all its own
and nearly as efficient as any other.
100 Words About Where It Happened
I’ve seen stains
on the road where
it happened. I’ve seen
ambulance lights
heading away from
where it happened.
I’ve heard weeping
and screaming,
tortured explanations
of torture and death,
condescension turned to
terrorism, eventual drift
from truth to shrug, and
blue, blue winds blowing
any remaining truth like
so many dandelion seeds away
from where it happened;
if you want me
to testify about where
it happened, where
exactly it happened,
we’ll be here a while
as I point and say
there and
there and
there
and there and
there
is where it happened.
Everywhere
is where it happened.
Taking Stock
My body,
deceiving me
in some new way
daily.
My main diseases?
Sugar sludge blood,
moods lurching
from death sludge
to joy stomp, sleep
a series of strangulations;
each of these a wee bomb
waiting to rend me.
My brain,
pummeling me
as it always has.
My approach to life,
a recalibration loop
barely held together
at a weak seam.
My upbringing,
gentle horror show
wrapped in
soft white bread.
My heritage?
Half worlds away from here
in two opposed directions,
the vacuum in my core strong enough
to suck at them, too weak to bring them
smashing together into a good
cold weld.
My understanding
of that history?
Half book learning,
half frantic triage, all
of it guesswork when
push comes to shove
on the edge of the void.
My homeland?
An experiment in something.
Steal a medium and grow
a culture on it. Pretend
we don’t know
what it feeds on.
My future here?
I’m not alone in the game,
in the approach to it,
thank all the small stones
in the earth and sky
for that; thanks for
a hand to hold while I wait;
thanks for the hope that
I make it easier for them
in my own way;
but I know I will have to
run it in alone, diving down
a slip and slide built with
rust-fouled water and
undercover stones;
I know
I’m coming in too fast,
too hard, and in no shape
for the finish,
but I’m coming in. It’s
something to do, the only thing
to do; confusion and conviction
in action;
here I come
smashing in.
In The Wind
To the people who stopped dancing
after the Twist, after the Frug, after
the Robot, after the Dougie: pick up
what’s left of yourself from the doorman
and leave the club. Why are you here
when there are so many people waiting
to dance? You’ve crowded the floor,
taken up a lot of space.
No one can move unless they do
a shuffle like yours. So many have
so much wildness to unleash
that this is killing them.
You might have known that feeling once
and you might want to know it again, but
what you’re doing right now doesn’t come close
to the free shake they long to do. Maybe
that’s why you want this. Maybe them dying
without a leg to dance on is part of some plan
you’ve hatched to get your own rhythm back
but it’s nothing that will stand. So: get off the floor
if that’s all you’ve got. Get out, get
out the door without looking back.
There’s a new crowd waiting. Stay
if you are ready to move again. If not,
there’s a wind outside. Go be in it.
Tattoo Dwellers
Whenever they buy a country
they have their names tattooed
all over every open patch.
We lived here before they got here
or got here after the inking up but
our names don’t look like theirs, so
we have to hide in the spaces
in the letters, the gap of the upper
“A”, the narrow rooms afforded
inside “D” and “O.” It helps your chances
if you are comfortable
living under a thin sheen of blood.
Poem To Be Read At A Press Conference
Hearing of your latest
spurt of hell, I wonder
who will ask the question
that will close your throat
at last.
I wonder if you
will be at a podium
in the middle of some
hateful, stupid sentence
full of self-referential, self-
serving pablum for you that
will deal terror to so many others
when someone blurts out
the right spell, the right curse
in the form of an inquiry
you can’t deflect, or
will it come from a half-trusted aide
on a golf course
somewhere, mid-swing,
while you’re trying to forget
everyone else and focus on
your own perfection that’s always
just beyond your grasp, or
will it come from one of your children,
checking in on you
long after midnight as you stare daggers
into the screen light between
your soft little hands, or
will it come, most improbably,
from yourself as perhaps
a chunk of clot hits your brain
in the right spot to release you
from this unrelenting lust for
the reverence and squat obedience
of all others. What question will it be
that takes you down, pours you
into a puddle of gray flesh on
a public floor, terrified as always
but with a fading awareness
that this is what you always wished
for so many others, what you dealt
with so many of your labored breaths,
and now you may meet them face to face?
No one’s certain,
but rest assured,
we’ll keep asking
until we see you fall.
The Public
They are realizing at last, if only dimly,
what they’ve bought and what’s been
sold out from under them.
Sitting there slack, slumped against hubris, mouths
opening and closing, sounds coming out:
no sense to be had there. You would think
they’d get up and move, either
trying to escape or beating a path
toward something better to come after
such an awful time; but not now, or not
yet at least, in spite of the scent of urgency
in the air. Instead they hold harder to
the prejudices and suspicions
they’ve always been chained to,
as if such things could save them
in a storm that’s only now begun
to rise to full scream. They sit there
and scream along, they do not move;
as they are engulfed, they seek
a scapegoat and avert their eyes
from what they’ve bought, from
what’s been sold
from under them
with their clueless, ecstatic consent.
Song From The Genocided (Ironweed Tea)
When you reach the point
where you trust nothing
except your gut
and your gun
and the finest music
you know is simple chaos
accompanied by
percussion
and every pow wow poster
makes you weep for
your parents and
your broken feet
and when the news comes on
the television you
hear chickens settling
into their roosts
to await the divine weasels
who will come for them
in the night and take them
for some yet-unseen purpose
When you write such things
that readers insist you must
roll your pen in flour to make it whiter
before the next workshop
that you invite them to
go bobbing for your ass
in a hot vat of grease rendered
from the killing fields of Everywhere
and the music shifts to
four on the floor and tosses
a cumbia over that until
your fear is overcome by rage
or transforms to something akin
to a detachment from the future
and the present is all still past
and you clutch your gut and your gun
and shoot out the news on screen
and shove your pen into your eye
and you look the curious readers up and down
and ask for nothing from them at last
When you get there
you give me a call and we
can sit together sipping tea
made from ironweed
a yellow tea that will taste
like rust-burnt bridges and tonic sweat
and maybe then
we can call ourselves
worthy of our bloodlines
worthy of our tribes
worthy of all the dead who came before us
and worthy of being ancestors ourselves someday
Downtown Cookie
Cookie, one look at you tells us
you are fashion, you are
drugs, you are the art side
of a new canvas. It is not clear
if you are for sale or have been sold;
maybe you are self-possessed and
not available except as display but
we all want as much of you
as we can get. That is how
downtown cookie crumbles:
do it for themselves, do it out of need
or for need-cobbled reasons; then
one of us grabs that unique skin,
puts it on, wears it to cafe, cabaret,
club, company store, the better end
of the street map, and that’s that.
Cookie, downtown cookie, we are know
you get left behind but you’ve done it before:
reinvent, come back as new fashion,
new drugs, newly living art. Come back
and see us sometime — or better yet,
we’ll come back downtown when it’s safer,
when we need an appropriately downtown skin
to perk us up; when downtown’s less you, and more us.
Bellwether
There: a being visible
in the edge of the forest,
barely solid in the dusk;
silver mist, cloak with no face within.
Unwilling to find it supernatural
until other options are exhausted,
you call to it using names
of living people it might be,
ending with “Hello? Hello?
when there is no response
and there is still no response
with those greetings. Day dims
and that being, now firm
and opaque, moves into clear sight
in the backyard. You still can’t be certain
of what it is, but it seems honest
and ominous, not trying to hide
as it moves toward you.
You’ve heard of such things
lurking in other lands, poorer lands;
bellwethers, harbingers,
avatars. Perhaps divinity,
perhaps depravity, perhaps
something not defined well
by your limited experience. It seems
all news in recent days suggests
such beings have been among us
at all times, are more numerous
than ever now. You stare at it
approaching across land
you thought was safe,
thought was your own.
It’s stopped now, stands
in your sightline. Takes
the measure of your regard.
Waits for you to name it, then
to move toward it or flee;
waits to name you as well,
since it sees you as a silver mist,
a cloak with no face within.
None of us have names now
or faces. All of us clouds of fear
looming in each other’s woods
on the outskirts of safety.
Crowned Demon
When I was your crowned demon
I lived better. I slept better
and dined easily with no
shredding pain in my belly
after. I was kingly in my affect
yet had no subjects to fawn
for me, scrape for me, die
for me. I fought you like
any threatened being and
wore both winning and losing so well
you ground your teeth at night
with the nagging cancer of
victor’s envy.
Now that I’ve become
your logo, your clowned
honoree, your advertised
history, I can’t stop bleeding
inside. I see what you’ve made
on posters, hats, cigarette packs
to help you lay your claim
to what you think I was, to help you
twist me into believing
that all I am is memory and
template and rogue wave.
You name me ancestor without
a crumb of shame, name me
friend without a hand to offer,
name me chic without a care.
When I was your crowned demon,
your merciless savage, I was still
a better human than you.
When you named my children
nits, called me lice, I was
still a better human than you.
When I was your obstacle,
your plague, your big “in the way,”
I was still a better human than you.
When you beat me into pale imitation
and cut me free of my tongue,
I was still a better human than you,
and if I am now to be your mascot,
you had better learn how to sleep
with one eye on me, because
I recall what it meant to be
your crowned demon and as such
I am still
a better human
than you.
Revisionist History
(Originally posted 3/20/2012.)
In the full history of governments
it has never mattered how they start;
they’ve always ended the same way.
The venal game their way to power
and stay there regardless
of the label they choose to wear.
In the full history of nations
it has never mattered how you love them;
they’ve only liked you back, only at certain times.
In the full history of history
what happens has never mattered;
all that ever matters is what is said
about what happened
or did not happen, or is said
to have not happened.
I tell you these things
not to make you despair
or get you angry.
I tell you this not to make you
shrug away the urge to justice
or fall into dumb acceptance;
nor do I do it
to delight in your
earnest helplessness.
I tell you this to say
battles are never won; instead
they become games to be replayed.
You will lose, and you will win;
some will die playing,
killed by others who are also playing.
There are no nations but two:
the strugglers and the lords.
Both are everywhere, speak all languages.
If you want to pursue happiness,
chase it
but recall
history
and nation
and government
pursue happiness too —
they do it, always,
by hunting you.
In the history of humans
there’s dancing and loving,
making of art and music,
good sweat,
grand tears,
and lots of laughter.
Those lift us into being human,
keep us hoping,
make us happy
beyond the vagaries of
what the lords desire.
It’s our story
to hold, not theirs to hand us.
Do not forget that
when you tell it to your children.
My Gods
You come at me
and come at me
as you have for years
with gods
you brought with you
from your land
and tell me I am
cursed, doomed,
blighted.
You cast spells,
toss masses;
lay ghosts under my feet;
offend with talk of
how wrong-soaked
my soul is.
You brandish
the things you stole from us
as if they were your own
wands or censers or
crucifixes,
as if your hands
upon them are
enough
to use their power?
Listen to me,
missionary;
listen to me,
pagan colonizer;
listen to me,
plastic shaman,
thief,
dog
so unleashed from
your own stone and sea
that you cannot feel
how lost you are:
you are
on ground where
my gods live and
no matter how far yours
traveled to get here,
they’re still
tourists, they’re surely
tired,
they certainly
do not
belong;
I have gods
at my back
rested and waiting and
grounded deeply
in this earth.
Nothing of yours
has ever
shaken them.
Nothing
ever will.
Orange Crush
In a New Hampshire
tourist trap cave, confused
in mid-step
about which way to turn
by the dim light,
my hammering chest,
and the sudden rubber
in my knees.
I’m not getting
any younger, of course. No
one is, even the kid behind me
who settles against the wall
with obvious impatience,
waiting for me
to move again.
I take another second
and grunt myself through
the crevice someone long ago
joyfully named “Orange Crush.”
I think of soft drinks and R.E.M.
and the Denver Broncos and
what if I have a heart attack here?
Don’t know what that kid would do
if I did. I doubt “Orange Crush”
means the same to him
as it does to me but I’m sure
its meaning would change
forever for him then, becoming
“fat old man expiring before my eyes.”
Fat old man expiring before my eyes,
none of us getting younger, militia flags
on the trucks in the parking lot,
“Blue Lives Matter” T-shirt on the kid,
the Orange Crush in constant redefinition.
Someone once said, “the personal
is political.” Someone once said to me,
“Not everything is political, y’know.” Someone
once said “isn’t it nicer not to talk politics
and just be happy?”
I make it out of the cave into
the light, the view across the valley
into the White Mountains. Someone
named them that, someone who came here
and called them White.
That Someone has sure said a lot of things.
Me? I’m just saying,
I’m suddenly sorry
that was the last cave on the trail.
It was cool in there, and dark, it smelled
as it’s likely smelled since the last Ice Age,
and I didn’t feel like I had
anything to worry about
except dying.
Dark Matter 