The sun’s hot. Too hot.
The water’s wet but it’s getting scarce
and the dirt’s becoming precious around our feet.
We look at our kids and say,
don’t get cocky about the pursuit of happiness
being easy. Get a job and keep looking.
Pass a test and get a job and keep looking. Kick a ball
and pass a test and keep looking. Do it all —
go to school kick a ball pass a test get a job
kick a tire
and a man
and a woman
and a queer hide
and a brown hide
and don’t forget that Jesus, he kicked a lot of ass,
so I’ve heard, so we’ve all been told.
Keep looking, kick something that’s already down
and it’ll almost feel like you stumbled over happiness
in the dry weeds that are taking back our lawns.
Keep at it. It has to be here. Someone must have it and
it’s ours, damn it. We’ve got the paper
that says so. We’ve got the muscle. Dislocated
as the bones may be under our good skin,
we’ve still got the muscle and the guns. Rubble
piling up? That’s just good cover
for a sniper. Don’t get comfortable, kid.
You want it you have to hunt it.
You’re going to have to take aim
at the fucks who stole it.
Go get ’em, kid.
Go get ’em.
Tag Archives: political poems
Pursuit Of
362 Miles
Woke up to sun
and no smoke.
Birds prattling on,
two daffodils finally up and shining
from our front walk mulch.
Nice place, this. Nice place.
No smoke
for miles around. No fire
not currently under control.
This is not to say that
there’s nothing smoldering here,
or that we’re not so far from Baltimore
that we know nothing of burning
or why things burn.
It’s just that right now
this is a nice place,
and if we do smell smoke
it’s got to be from 362 miles away,
carried on a strong wind
from a place where
birds bloom
and flowers chirp, where everything’s
a little backwards.
If we do smell smoke here —
do we smell smoke here?
No, can’t be. We keep sniffing,
must just be
power of suggestion; well, maybe
a little something there, a little
something on that wind.
Microaggressions
Street scene:
my eyes unmet,
their hands drifting
onto wallets, their bags
pulled in tight to
their guarded bodies.
Office observed:
stumble, whisper,
awkward pause,
sudden stop,
change in subject,
question without thought,
thought without question.
Media, in media res:
what does a story say
about what a blog says
about what a blog says
about what was said
about what was said
about what was said
about how they died?
Surrounded,
sundered,
smothered,
simmering,
smoldering —
Now this? No.
Not here, I beg,
not with you too —
not you too;
do you understand
that I am far beyond ready
to burn my home? That
if I have to ignite
the here and now
to reach the future,
I will?
Old Hippies
Originally posted on 10/31/2011.
Sparse-framed, reticent, particular;
the old hippies come into town
on odd weeks
for what they cannot grow
or raise.
I hear they’ve got a sod roof on their house.
Life off the grid, under ground:
a few acres,
a 1978 Ford pickup.
A friend sneers at them,
calls them un-American.
Here on the grid we’ve got
fear, troubles,
the grinding grind. We all
talk too much, some
in jeers:
Hey, hippie,
go hug a tree. Go
bathe in the snow.
Get a job.
Sparse,
quiet,
don’t associate with us
unless they have to.
Un-American bastards.
Hey, hippies —
get in the trough with us
and bring some eggs
or weed when you come —
bring something else
to eat, something
we don’t have.
People Of The Stacks, The Racks, And The Checkout Aisles
They’re tilting,
tipping over because
one half of every one of them
is horror.
They’re lopsided
from carrying it.
Immaculate beings
in split levels,
or lean and dirty ghosts
in a tent under cold stars; why wonder
if it’s nature or nurture driving them?
What’s driving them
is nurture playing
in the snowfields
of nature’s mountains.
What’s driving them
is nature slipping a hand
into nurture’s back pocket
as they walk side by side.
Only one half of each is horror.
The other half is frozen joy.
They look for thaw.
Limp toward clues to it. Call out:
Is there something to warm it with
on sale here?
What price the fire this time?
May there be credit
at terms easier
than what we know
we could be forced to sign.
May we straighten up.
May no one
laugh or shoot at us
on our way
to straightened up.
Impartial Observers
Originally posted 7/14/2010.
That lump we can see
in the near distance
is a nation.
We once thought it motionless but
are beginning to think
it may be moving.
Hard to say from here.
If it is moving,
it appears to be crawling.
We have heard from the citizens of that nation
that some among the masses there
believe they are standing tall.
Others believe that they are crushed flat
by those who believe
they’re standing tall on their own
but who in fact are standing
upon them.
Perhaps no one in the nation
is crawling at all,
and no one is completely still;
maybe what we see from here
is the ground
sliding away
from beneath them.
That nation seemed so far away,
once upon a time,
and we were impartial observers
from this high vantage point.
We’d thought we’d found the perfect spot
to watch it happen from a distance.
Now we have to admit
that right where we’re standing
the footing is starting to writhe.
Bleeding Out
New poem.
The symptoms
of exsanguination
colloquially known as “bleeding out”
include
anxiety
blue lips and fingernails
unofficially sanctioned neighborhood demarcations
flimsy justifications of hair trigger rage
low or no urine output
profuse sweating
a profound distrust of received wisdom
easy to believe conspiracies and backroom handshakes
shallow breathing
dizziness
imprisonment
educational poverty
confusion
chest pain
the elevation of cultural assimilation
to sacramental status
loss of consciousness
low blood pressure
carnival barkers on the news
a camera on every corner
rapid heart rate
weak pulse
death upon death
upon no longer unexpected death
the echoes
of centuries of trickle and drip
turning into a flood
of names to remember
a cloven nation
drenched in blood
that should never have seen
the light of day
The Saints Of Our Household Shrines
New poem (draft — just getting it out there; it’s been in progress for a while.)
The saints of our household shrines are banding together to form a political party.
Throngs of our beloved dead memorialized in table altars in gently shabby homes and clean-swept humble cubbyholes are massing to stand against officially canonized hypocrisy regarding who we should honor with supplication and offerings.
They refuse our tithes, saying we’ve paid enough in loss and pain to fund any campaign.
The platform?
Chase down and face down the Founding Fathers, the missionaries of genocide, the greed-slurping apologists for bad acts that make a profit, the prophets of compartments, the sky-godmothers of assimilation, the go along get-alongs.
The slogans?
“Behold the dead to understand the living.
“Behold the living who come to make you understand,
but know we do not need you to understand
before you stand aside.”
The saints of our household shrines march before us carrying no signs, wearing no buttons, adorned only in scraps of family photos, funeral cards, locks of treasured hair, newspaper clippings, the stains of generations of tears.
We will not lose. We cannot lose.
We, and they, have nothing to lose.
Revisionist History
Originally posted 3/20/2012.
In the history of government
there are a million examples
of how they begin, but only one
of how they end: they end
with the venal
gaming their way to power
and staying there regardless
of the labels they choose to wear.
In the history of nations
it doesn’t matter how the people love them.
They only love you back
a little, and only at certain times.
In the history of history
it doesn’t matter what happens,
only what is said about what happened
or did not happen, or is said
to have not happened;
in the history of history
there are but two nations —
the strugglers and the lords.
In the history of humans
there’s dancing and loving
and the making of art and music;
there’s good sweat, grand tears,
and a lot of laughter,
but do not confuse that
with the history of government and nation.
If you want to pursue happiness,
know that government and nation
pursue happiness too —
and they do it, always,
by chasing and catching
you.
Strike (A Lesson From Afghanistan)
Originally posted 10/6/2012. Original title, “Drone Strike.”
Early fall,
window has been open for cleaning.
A fly’s gotten in,
sounds like
one last big bluebottle
for the season with a voice like
a Dangerbee. Should look
twice to be sure, but no time for that;
I klll it with one smack
of an already read,
soon to be recycled
magazine.
Done. And lo —
it was a
Honeybee.
How did it seem
so huge? Tiny, golden thing…
quick: brush it
into the gutter of the window
and then push it out
onto the ground
along with my small regrets,
telling myself
this would have been done
differently
had I recognized it.
Diamonds Are Not Forever
New poem.
We have been speaking for minutes,
decades, centuries
on the nature of inequality —
we have watched an entire
concocted history
driven by it —
we have shown how
blood
is the grease for it —
we have shown that
even the diamonds
used to symbolize
eternity and love
are greased in
blood —
and still,
things are bloody,
blood flows, blood rises.
in closing, then,
in sad and angry closing
we offer the truth that
the four Cs —
Color, Cut,
Clarity, Carat weight —
are artificial,
are designed to facilitate commerce,
are purely cynical exaltations
of a central metaphor;
in closing,
what we oppose is
the unnatural,
flawless,
white,
heavy diamond
as
the standard
for all stone,
and we are unwilling
to mine it
any longer.
Cartography
New Poem.
Set your pen upon
the following points
and draw lines
connecting dusty walls
to corners full of hair from long-dead pets
Draw a line from high-piled tables
to near-empty pantry shelves
and sparsely populated refrigerator
From bills in a heap
to nothing in the bank
with small hope of ever having more than that
from week to week
Draw those lines and
you’ll end up with a map
of seeming disintegration
that will somehow
never touch upon
how the people
who live in this territory
manage to smile
care for their children
imagine joy
and build toward a future
situated somewhere within
these borders
Whiteness
New Poem.
I’ve taken to calling it
“Whiteness,” that
low hum,
that cloud of unknowing.
It just keeps running.
I don’t know how to turn it off.
It’s caused amnesia
at a cellular level.
Try to put a finger on Whiteness
and it slides away
like mercury:
liquid, metal, baffling.
If I spoke magic I’d conjure it thus
and try to hold it still: come, be bound,
tsunami of broken mirrors,
snowfield of washed crosses,
tangle of lilies, thicket of oleanders,
angular dramas, spoiled seeds…
Can you truly say
it is not its own distinct thing?
It cannot be defined any longer
as absence or default.
If I stare into Whiteness
long enough and hard enough
I lose myself in it — no surprise;
it was built in such a way
that one can’t help
but stare into it:
the far end
of a hall
of locked doors.
A television permanently tuned
to a news station that promises
your story will be read soon,
right after this word,
right after this word from our sponsor.
It’s not about the nature
of individuals, exactly,
except when it is —
except when
one of them doesn’t see how
they’re soaking in it;
except when they call it
“the norm”
to cancel out
“the other.”
It’s not about how hard or soft
someone has
or hasn’t had it, exactly,
except when it is —
except when
it silently opens a stuck door
and things are even a touch easier
for someone who denies
or doesn’t even realize that they
carry that key with them everywhere.
It’s not about
anything other than
itself, really, and that
is the problem: how
slippery it is
with its privileges, how slick it is
without admitting it,
how invisible it is to itself.
But I can see it tonight
as I stand under the eaves
of my father’s house, rain coming down
just beyond my nose; there’s
Whiteness in my face, in my ear,
in my blood, all over me
whispering,
be one with me…
I don’t know.
Maybe
it’s that flag
of bones it’s wrapped in,
maybe it’s knowing how many bones
were abandoned
in deserts far and near
under that flag,
maybe it’s knowing
how many bones drifted down
to the seabeds
of the Middle Passage.
Maybe it’s
the long goodbye
I’d have to make
to my otherness
once I accept
the name for my own,
or maybe it goes back, all the way back
to those childhood Saturdays
where the question at playtime
was always
whether I wanted to be the cowboy
or the Indian
and I always chose what felt closest.
It was fine until
one day
someone asked
why I always wanted
to be the bad guy
and never
the cowboy.
Hello, Whiteness,
is what I should have said then
but I was young and uneasy,
afraid not to play along.
I hung up my cap guns
soon after that for safety’s sake —
but we were just getting started,
Whiteness and me.
Whiteness started haunting me, needling me,
kept repeating:
why do you always want
to be the bad guy?
in that supple voice.
It spit that
a million different ways
and they all meant the same:
why celebrate
difference? why you gotta
be like that? calm down
and sink into me
like you would a milk bath,
like you would surrender to
a horizon wiping blizzard.
Go to sleep. I promise
it will be warmer
eventually.
That voice eventually faded into
a low hum, a cloud of unknowing.
Whiteness, let me tell you,
maybe I’m wrong,
maybe it’s amnesia
at a cellular level,
but maybe I fear you so much
because
I can’t recall anyone
ever saying
it made them warmer
to die a little.
All-American Hindsight
New Poem.
On paper the words
were stunning
and simple and
well-turned,
the guarantees
seemed
sincere and
all-encompassing; but
now, after all the charm
of feeling welcomed
and declared to be
part of the family
has passed,
now that loopholes and
conditions and
unfortunate realities
have been explained
and explained again,
I recall that
behind every entrance to
what has been called
“polite society”
stands a minion
with an agreeably polished
and impeccably detailed
gun.
NSA, CIA, FBI, Etc.
Originally posted 7/28/2013.
Let’s get over the fear
of who might be listening and remember
we were born to free speech.
Let’s talk louder.
Let’s not relent at all and talk about everything
at once. Let’s mention our
bowel movements
in the same breath
as our passionate defense
of the right to violate a law
in pursuit of justice beyond it.
Give our breakfast cereals credit
for insider trading. Describe our cars
as perfect examples of style so wild
they terrorize the road under them.
Don’t capitulate: overwhelm.
They won’t know what to do
with a firehose narrative. If by chance
they come for us, let’s laugh at them.
Let’s laugh at them, all of us. Laughter
is the war they’ll never win.
Dark Matter 