Blue Poets in a Red State
Anthology bound in the flag
and pages from the Holy Bible
About to be remaindered to heaven's Halliburton retail outlet
from the Roman Legion Club in Velva
are come with a hymn gawd save the chief the
dude centurions I hang a ribbon
for Captain Troy Haug of North Dakota
in my other red state for Major Shawn
Chávez are roads in Mojave County
the sheriff won't drive have to shave my head
to drink to gawd and Arizona there
Hopis give it till twenty eleven
I do not know what Mandans are saying
Two sunny days in a row defy a foggy tendency
Is it mind or Pacific sea undergoing change?
Does fear encourage or inhibit change?
Both, both. It's all the same
I'm a Blue Poet in a Red State preparing for escalation
Who knows?
Ask the deer grazing in pine needles outside my window
No response. Nature impartial, it seems
Nothing certain, it seems
House full or empty or never built
It's not a thing this material passion
Domestic possession
Passion of Christ or humanist insanity?
HUMANIST SI CHRIST NO
[Demonic possession
Passing fashion to Religious Rites
& Self-styled Saviors of Humanity?]
Shadows and light
Elegaic tuning of transitions etched
on historic memory, I quote:
I'm a Blue Poet in a Red State preparing for damnation
Who won the war? Tell me!
The good, the bad, or the ugly?
We're all god's children believe it or not
So they say. And I repeat it without exception
Those of us who deny Him don't really deny Him
You see, we're just making our own way
counting on Grace. Nobody's got
a monopoly on Hubris
There's room for us all in America!
Oh yeah?
["The buses are boarding, now
follow the men in black with white collars.
The lines will always form on the Right."]
We find god in the way we hate others
We find god in the way we hate our hatred
However god finds us he's learned to keep his mouth shut
that's because he does not have a mouth
I'm a Blue Poet in a Red State preparing for evacuation
A resolution revelation, buy an overpriced house!
It's all starting to look different
now. The enormous numbers,
moving and paying the price doesn't seem so extreme
It's a way of life, you're buying into
California! Open space and museums
of open space!
In Miami art is a customized workshop of fashion:
[Satan glitz or Jesus-jihad drab.]
So we start our peace and justice centers and learn to study Zen
Hose down our copies of Steppenwolf and tell ourselves that
strife is always temporary and
America will be America again
Buying time on CNN and space on the Brooklyn Bridge!
Florida has gone the way of the panther
Nearly extinct or extinct, that's the answer.
[Creationism's God replaced it with Diebold,
more slick than sleek, every third Kerry hacked to Bush
while the old die waiting in Palm Beach county lines.]
You have to be quick on your feet
A political dancer. One step at a time and overtime
I'm a blue poet in a red state, remembering relocation
that my parents and grandparents survived:
My mom, born in the Arizona desert. My dad,
at 5 years old, sent to the tracks to sleep in
horse stalls until the barracks were built
then on to Jerome, and Rohwer, then on to poverty, recovery,
prosperity, but still lost in memory. When left unchecked
our government steals lives, languages, pride,
communication from generation to generation.
It's not our government.
It's the corporations' government.
This is no time for easy resignation.
This is a divided nation
A Blue Poet in a Red State preparing for the duration
Enemies at the gate, while our emperor seeks deification
A Blue Poet in a Red State fears annihilation
A blue poet in a red state is the third sex, enough eunuch
To sample the cornucopia of Senor Tom's Salsa Con Queso
Which brings me to the topic of conquest, not knowing
Your limits, not staying in your place, not staying put,
Not knowing when to stop, when to go back, to turn
Left, right or center. I'm not blind or insensitive but
A survivor, on television, where I tell of the vision of the Virgin Mary
And the sandwich. And people applaud, and oh how I love
Them, and they love me, and I love everybody, in this
Purifying air of duty, honor, cunt. The unbuttoning of her
Blouse several hours later drove me to my knees.
But that's just a report that doesn't
mysteriously echo. But that's just the liberator,
dipping his beak. I know lines of communication I could use
have been bundled to suspend a bridge
above my ol' town. I'm washing the town away
but by morning they've painted it back again.
The calendar's dusty. The toast isn't
technologically advanced. The past clicks in.
The present clicks out. What happened to the future?
I'm saving my hair clippings, in case.
I'm a super blue poet in a blue county
In a red state in a red country. The recount
Was crooked and the scoundrels are loaded.
I'm counting down the days until the next
Election. Four years more to wear rose-
rose-colored glasses to look at the world.
No, no: get it on for 2006! But
I'll hope for the best that the white flag of
Peace joins the Red and the Blue.
Wave the white flag of don't surrender. Don't lie,
don't spin, don't harm, don't smirk. Don't wreck
what serves you, unless to expect The Law that follows.
We be terminal by year Bullshit Karma Doctor.
Why not use precaution in the first place? Old Red
with the new Blues, though governments rise & fall
& sink even lower, watersheds remain delicious.
So be in love with everything & everybody.
Every human being loved as a trainwreck of identity.
The monkey tags along to plant pine trees
that blow in wind wind wind wind wind wind aft
er spank imposition blue-perio martyr hardly wack
beef beep rocks uprise window wiggle omen smack.
laser ichat starry backwards bruck saliva mouth-pulse draft
ghost-awk snore merely shock breathe elec wind oh aft
breakage tepid screen glut walls fleeing mainline wack
red-status chemo speech and mainline wire flow-code smack.
(breaker breaker wind wind wind wind wind draft.)
anywhere that we could find steady winds
to rub away our stone-cold skin
we will run to before we remember
our feet rocks, stable but slow
our ponderous legs lift
our voices starting low but building
creating the winds we search for, reach for
then we run out of our grainy skin
out of the red into the blue
before we know we are there
blood's coded maimed alongside lineage of
drear ineducation that contages from
s/low-functioning protected head empty of empath-
thereby favoring the short-term of the red
unchoice that preys upon ubiquity invoking pRAYer
for alleged freedumb meaning do-as-I unto
toward the defined plan that trans-
lates thus: selfselfselfselfselfselfselfself
selfselfselfselfselfselfself UNstart far from
multifluous plumed sketches of epluribus unum
layers of the cacophonous wire
rise and coil in the brass heat sun
down among the cataleptic senators
a half starved dog is sniffing
for any scrap of decency,
for any scattered page of scripture
not diseased by the grease
that drips from their palms –
an arthritis of southern cooking
and poison morality
Snow falls over the little adobe houses
Where the Christmas decorations go up at Halloween and come down at Epiphany
And the blue screen of the television reflects the street
And no one is speaking to each other any more--it's a disgrace
How the husband is voting, No one--No one!
Not since before Roosevelt built the dam has ever acted this way
But you can't divorce a man just because
And the grown children come over and start playing that fucking Michael Moore tape
Not just by the hour but all day and all night--which changes no one's mind
But my neighbor gives me the high sign about the Red Soxs winning
Although we know we're fucked, up the alley of the fucked, as they say in Spanish,
mi amo el ojo, bush the mass murderer, bush the cannibal,
Bush the devourer of babies, bush the mafia don, bush the razorblade
Tongue of fear & soldier’s lament, eating false pretenses, the last spiked head of the
dinosaur skin, the baggage of future dimensions seething nuclear breath the demons of
disease red like a dead man’s blood, red like yr old sunburned neck red the color of
broken veins & twisted remains left to rot in the army mad afternoon, red state sucking
the lifeblood out of our clear bright afternoons with hate & recollection, remorse &
obligation, singing these rifle songs into the rapid guts of prosperity, we relinquish the
parliament of sins to yr leaving,
Yes, I'm a blue ball in a brick-red scrotum.
Shitberry-Bush has diaper-rash of the brain,
& I dearly wish I could swing my hammery brush and coat 'im
With Ozone-hole pulled outa blue sky thru acid rain.
Or look at it this way: blue's the hue of life-borne water,
Red the color of strife-torn slaughter.
But beyond these symbols, Republicans represent Greed,
Which the smarties among 'em disguise as Creed.
We have to penetrate Time with Care
To, ever, hope for fresh life there.
Yo-di-lay-hee-yo-ti-ho-de-lay-HU
GEORGIA Reports in: screw this color scheme, I am a red poet,
commie verse. damned handwring ing blue excuses for radicalism
"alternative" ala john kerry, as any corporation can be.
credibility gap.
do we have an evil fuck in office, yes. & a dumb one
we all feel . but look how tidy we were outfoxed. tragedy as farce.
the alternative win would have been sugar coating on similar shit.
man in suit steps nervously to the right.
incitements to riot are being seen everywhere (in whose head?)
put your hands in – retake the red!
Blue in red, a purpling blend, a way to resist those bushy binaries.
Yesterday, spoke for a bit at the opening of Faces of Iraq:
The photos, the eyes, particularity of each different human being,
To think then of each, to consider each as this once.
A photo and a face, art and the documentary a force
Resistant to the censorship of our media. Have you seen
A single image of a dead American soldier? Who authored
This erasure? The avalanche of lies jamming the media until
Every statement becomes merely partial and suspect, a red or
Blue half-truth, gauzy curtain around the Wizard's control booth.
Wrapped and bandaged, beaten purple-blue,
In the papers biblical devolution
Then revolution, "I won't stand for it anymore!"
Sing a wind-pipe dream
Of green poets in red states, an ice-blue cornice
Set off by canon shots becomes an avalanche.
My baby fetus sticks out her tongue
Children aren't dumb, they see
In January whiteouts that pro-war is pro-blood
And that the gauze always stays sticky blue.
But yet, as I sit out on my back porch
And look out at the overgrown brick walk
That leads to the back gate, I muse: this ground
Isn't red. It's tawny, brown, black, gray,
An admixture of grainy shit that clumps
And holds the roots of one butched tree and lots
Of silver, seeding grass; and bordered by
A chain link fence. I think, if my back yard
Is this fucked up, am I even a blue
Poet? A dog runs by. He looks injured.
I hear applause from a TV rising
Through a neighbor's window. I am not blue.
I am not a painter; I am a poet.
A cento of white glass, a curio,
A cameo. A bad translation of Tu Fu,
A snowball running down a hill.
There is no hill. Glass! Glass! Glass!
Ginsberg slept here. Kansas spleen.
Wearing ridiculous hats as a badge of honor.
For example. Other examples include
Eating while still full, using words you
Don't know the meaning of. Making inappropriate hand signals.
I'm a blue poet in a state red with annunciation,
the chair a butt-assed gray, piped-in wind singing
my name of imprecations, signing its peace, no
reason for fast breathing, hysteria, space white
drained to blanch of mind in ripe panic or
mass suicide, at least not yet, try breathing
with the room yet breaking with your screams, see
what I mean?, burnt calendars and day's darkness
filling your eyes, no reason to hide, your mind
a sudder of dark air, wings of a bestial dove.
Feeling blue, by night, by day,
blackened with blue, sore from
the chains of slavery, the imprisonment of mind
pitting my against your, separated by skin, vein
inequities, a bruiser's brotherhood exiling siblings
seeking voice from across the aisle. My America
is your America, tis of thee, tis of we. I'm card carrying
and book wielding. I'm a Blue Poet
reddened by the state,
in dread of mind locks and justice not for all.
Noone heard Emerson's call to cease promoting rogues.
How then are any poet's truthshards sorted from wellspun hype
when it's a such a long way back to hope?
I walk the glacier trail this morning, too dazed to see red.
Blue fog hides Thunder Mountain
while a lone eagle circles its prey.
For now at least, they haven't delivered up ANWR
to those who stuff the warchests.
It's not much in the biggest picture, but it's not nothing.
Tomorrow I'll send another check to Sam Hamill
but today I turn toward the sound of returning humpbacks
in the roiling blueblack sea.
Or the toiling blue-faced figure at the summit of Sleeping Giant
discovering blue in a big blue sky and naming it blue
against a backdrop of fallen snow, before writing the report
for the weather bureau and pay-per-view TV.
In every production, every person, every property,
there is the labor of the body, the work of hands, counted
into the bread we butter, the ore we refine for the finest
Damascus steel. Things of such short duration decay
without intention. On a mountain of limestone and red clay,
one must drill where the soil is thickest.
Ain't going to ask you where you built this boat as it plows
through paper blues and tidal reds; that wouldn't become me. I know
the plant manager gave everyone else bars and stars for Christmas,
but you're stuck out back, cooking ribs for the tattooed
'roids at Mr. Lucky's. Just give me this much room on Stella's
Oldsmobile run for the border, so that these backy
farmers let us keep the crappie we keep pulling out
of their wetback asses. I'm confused about the exact site
where those slaves and natives settled near the Savannah,
but I think we should hide by the hoary knees
of Hootie Johnson's green, green church. I've been celestially grown
inside a Baptist house, but never been called politely for light.
Hi, Michael: I voted for Kerry, but I don't feel like I've been parachuted
behind the enemy lines. My neighbors are good folk and hardly red,
maybe just a little green around the gills. The only time I felt really blue
is when I lived in the real red empire. Andrei
O, Mountain Mama, whose bulldozed mounds
bear jagged, haggard scars of coal baron hounds,
of multinational gluttons raping veiled watersheds
and dropping whoring pennies on hoary Mingo beds,
your blue sink their toes into blue grass,
study Storer defiance and buy Blenko glass,
your super-size-me red close school for the hunt,
file their torts and beg Jesus for rent next month.
O, Mountain Mama, whose Democrats are Republicans!
.everyone laughs at your pitiless contradictions.
Meanwhile Whitey spins in a color vortex mass of mind mis-
firings and pulls up the sheets to not see a disaster of His making.
It's like Europe 1913 or was it '29 or '33? Shit I forget
but the drag of eventuality will have its way and nature
comes around for the big one too when carbon org-
anisms slither around oozy cozy happy 'til oh fuck—
disaster strikes. Like, how will I get my truck from Mc
Nowhere to McSomewhere and make debt
payments for my 'burban spawn to sprawl out far out on floating
bubbles like the mind disconnected and misfired on landscapes
cracked into cosmic shit holes of Zoloft despondency.
But all this talk of dependency
reminds me not to acknowledge a dawn underwritten
by a tiny cry of night, a pattern of paper
to block out the sky. What I block changes
when hidden. What I did is what I do.
This brings me to that which my memory
often passes over. Too convenient to say
I've forgotten here, long absent
in the way of scribbling so I will remember
differently and more strangely than ever before.
and so the stranger enters; he closes the door
and that makes it a door, a softer
moment that took over a gesture
that meant to be softer still
there is between us the door, he said, getting distant
is another desert on which a ship slips by the window.
they're drowning, you said, or rather you answered
a flicker, a waver
in a voice just beyond the door
which is still closing all around us.
And few things are more lovely
than the sound of the human voice
save the one coming out of the mouth
of Chris Chocola: a state where,
with a friend from Spain, Juan Sanchez
wasn't allowed to purchase wine
one Sunday, Domingo not believing his ears!
Thank god for certain voices of peace:
Bryon Warkentin, Bart Lefever, and other
Menno-Brethren folk at Southside
Fellowship in Elkhart, where instruments of music
sound like the raga Michael Sterling
sang in a tin building in a city by
the sea where the seals came
by the hundreds to watch the people watch
them — this is the freedom of movement I
fear may be taken away by the freedom
of fearsome retribution enacted in the skies
on a Tuesday when we weren't thinking
about much of anything, reading the sutras
and walking with some notion of balance
the way I walk each day from my apartment
in Amara to Gros amidst the blaring bullhorns
atop cars, the voices calling on me to vote for somebody
in the upcoming Basque Parliamentary elections—
six large political parties and who knows how many small.
At home in Buffalo, Wyoming where the Basque immigrants
settled no democrat has been elected in a hundred years.
I am studying the many faces of democracy and wondering
what it means that in the Basque Country election campaigns
last two weeks—everyone has a say then it's finished—
while in the US they go on for years.
I find myself wondering why at this late date in the chain of human mistakes
'cultural authorities' think made things
should behave according to their expectations.
The question of how we read is a question of how we encounter is a question of
how we vote. Where do they find the time, these authorities,
what with all the keloid scars and bombs and such. The time to privilege
some forms, but not others.
Two weeks ago in North Carolina: crosses burning.
In flame you can see blue and red.
The paradigm has to change, not just its language [Urgency, choose us].
Cracks in the road,
black-tar toffee.
Getting cold: election day.
A hounds-tooth sofa. A squeaky haiku.
Smell of burning, like ash that darkens the country
when a volcano explodes on the other side.
Five days later it seemed like a year ago.
Clocks changed, a new president, old president.
A divide that much closer to winter.
But I believe in America
Whitman sunset saw and Oppen foxhole fought
Fragments in the rubble, wedge grain against green glass
Bottle blessing language constituted, declared
liberal befriends laugh at fourth flag
flying why—shoulder against the wheel queering
fears of unironic singularities ring the libertine bell
while the right-wing risorgiomento revises hysterectomy
we cower louder in laudanum lines and leave
the driving us-and-them oh when a miracle when
In the hospitals, Washington DC, Civil War
Whitman learned a brand new game from the wounded:
"Twenty Questions." Let's play.
Question number one--Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
Whitman answers: "Yes."
Oh my America, my unfound land,
The lichen, the coal-seam and the hummingbird,
Each in its defenseless superabundance wants to know
When oh when does Yes arrive?
Christ in his defenceless superabundance wants to know When? Blue dirge along our Mexico border, crimson line
the color of death (No More Death!)— & how we "suffer" here
caught, bound, losing rights in the name of freedom
while families die to get in, scraping through the world's most
militarized fence between "friendly" countries—
while we mopey hang bound, caught, stifled! / OUR AMERICA
LOOKS PRETTY GOOD TO THEM, a dream, a better value…
My ancestor stowed away from Sweden, ILLEGAL, this America
calling his blood, our fine land of dissent built by immigrants,
people dying to get here, bringing sheer will & vision & courage.
a blue poet, requiring salvation—
the meekest greed, to desire, to need, yes require
salvation, n. 2: liberation from ignorance or illusion
3a: preservation from destruction or failure
b: deliverance from danger or difficulty
and with this, i breath stale blue virginia air
drink once-blue waters, now murky
now maligned, until the soil renews itself
as all things renew,
4: renewal.
And then the writing teacher asked: which stripe on the flag do you love most?
The problem is we gave away blue to its description
And lost music in the increasing elegy.
Oh my love, my Asia in the Meadows,
The morning doves woke this morning,
Head to head, and began to eat.
That is a country for old etc.
I have heard the images sing each to each
Until a baby voice rose
And turned those notes into a town.
I'm the blue in green, five generations from Ireland and still glistening with my new
country's birth blood. I am the alabaster nigger and great-great-great-great grandchild of
someone else's immigration problem. I am a man in America because I look and talk like
the ones who've gotten used to having me around. Sleep easy, you same faced dreamers
thinking danger will announce himself thinking danger will announce himself like an
amplified call to prayer blaring from a mosque. America, you talented, frightened child,
learn from my Mother. My name still echos of pitched battles fought across the pond in
shanty streets where acronyms and colors caught their own children in the crossfire. I
know that nets can be woven to snare shades of skin and tongues wagging out of step
with the prayers written on my money. But the fact that they both talked to the same God
didn't stop Cain from killing Abel. Even the devil can quote scripture as he smiles and
shakes your hand.
Listen, brother of the emmigration,
I invite you, kin and stranger, to my Mississippi
of the mind, this Ireland in America that knows not
its green roots but knows its blues, sold upriver,
knows its Reds locked up in Parchment
(that's a prison, y'all) knows not its true wealth,
the greenbacks of trees and kudzued hills,
lusts just for green that comes from condos
squatting over earth scraped red and raw, where
the currency of poetry burns slowly oh brotherman slowly
So, I'm a blue poet in a GO BIG RED state, old enough to remember when Reds meant
Commies and Blues meant Robert Johnson or Bessie Smith. I remember when "seeing
red" meant fury and "true blue" meant loyal, when "in the red" meant you were losing
money and blue -- well, blue was my lover's eyes. And I remember when the red, white
and blue was mired in Vietnam -- a war I'm hearing echoes of as "shock and awe" drags
on. And I remember when someone asked how you tell a man (or woman) s/he was the
last one to die for a mistake? And who -- red or blue -- wants to tell them this time? Ten
lines/two cents from the prairie, where at least the sky is blue.
The prairie itself has been paved over, however and Wal-Marts,
radiating outward from the heartland like roads from the Kremlin,
have now been erected inside my dreams by developers who know
that headspace is much cheaper than land. I had a dream last night
in which Texas Rangers invaded Wal-Mart # 4,100,543, arrested everyone
they thought "queer," and threw them into Guantanamo.
A Ranger spokesman was quoted on Nightline as saying,
"If you are taking it up the ass or bowing down to Allah five times daily,
then the light of the Lord Jesus Christ does not shine on you. You are a terrorist."
I wondered if he would say the same about blue poets from red states.
Next to the Missouri, a river with all the blue in it
worn down to brown, we like blending ourselves
like the cornstalks at harvest, like trees as temperatures dip.
Nebraska doesn't seem so red some days
except for the sumac looking like it's burst
into flame, except for the palms of hands rubbed raw
working late in the fields, late in the packing houses,
hearing wives tales about what will help their kids' schools,
their taxes, their quality of life, the day long gone, the sky so deeply blue
we call it black.
Blue as tar, blue as a three-dollar bill, blue
as a sore thumb, blue peril, blue
as a queer half-caste poet in a red
state going through a blue period: blue
women playing blue guitars rising alien
and strange parting the endless dense stalks
of corn with their lush giant thighs
and blowing their blue breath against
the signs that tick by like mile markers:
"Abortion Stops a Beating Heart,"
leaving their blue giant footprints down
the highway that the governor would rather
let crumble than allow "those people,"
the queers, to adopt, raising their guitars
like torches, blue as the Statue of Liberty,
walking further west across state lines
where a boy died in my home town
pistol-whipped, tied to a fence and left
to die under a hot bright blue sky.
Living the life of blue
surrounded by dead red
the state of Kansas is small
in many ways however you look at it.
Then again those who live or do not
live here and think Kansas is flat
are blind and small minded.
We live with all this and at times
the reward is immense.
But only at times.
The red of the rose all wrong
against the house, but purer
than anything around it—
that's how they do it, by tending
the intensity: See no evil
but in the other face,
Hear none but in the words
of those who disagree with you.
We are consigned. I am blue
and slightly green. I often wander.
The old stories tell us when the king is sick
the country is sick. The king is sick.
He raves in his delirium. The doctors come
to shake their heads together. Then they turn
to tell the counselors the king is a great king.
The counselors tell the people the king is a god.
Some of the people reek in their own filth.
Many are slick with blood from every pore.
Others quake with ague, blue as ice.
Jackals are drifting through the neighborhoods.
They are sticking their snouts in damp keyholes,
in the creases of windows. This one is sniffing
the backs of my knees while I bathe,
sliding its jackal tongue along a tendon,
forcing me to wash twice with soap and never
enough to remove the king's filthy code. If I pull back the lip
of this one at my side in the candle dark, the teeth
have an acrid glow. Tell him. I see red through my fingers,
and when I flip the light, I see the Jackal's blue gums
hooding canines, the glazed, fluorescent snarl.
But hey, somewhere prayer flags are waving at the chicken shack,
and yesterday I saw a bumper sticker: "My boss is a Buddhist plumber."
10,000 marched in South Carolina to take the flag off the Statehouse.
Those blue hearts pumped sea water, filling up the streets where
they walked like Martin in Birmingham. Yes, my neighbors
think the world was created in 4004 B.C. but in our house
random mutation is next to godliness. If Lorca showed up reading
from his ballads somebody would probably drag up his past
in same-sex brothels, but at our house we'd serve him sweet tea.
Sweet tea is the universal solvent-- bring it on red-faced Bubba!
Speaking of going to hell. Just the other day I discovered a stuffed animal in my house,
one smuggled in like contraband for my daughter. Whoever brought it knows
I don't permit that sort of crap around her. Someone in my red state family is apparently
recruiting for the Armies of Christ, all ages. An agent of the Lord. Family values.
A pink bunny, innocent enough, but with its hands sewn bound in the shape of prayer,
eyes shut. Naturally. Inside it was this little plastic box that when squeezed starts chanting
"Now I lay me down to sleep." Straight out of a god damned horror flick. I fetched
a pair of scissors, unbound the bunny's hands, and then hammered that idiot voice box
to smithereens. Wham! Felt damn good. You see, I'm in the business of saving souls.
Oh, souls, yes, and minds.
Swirling petals, falling leaves, is a religious thought:
that they suffer,
that they are contingent,
that they are as transient
as an unexpected sudden summer shower,
or snowfall that deepens winter's bareness,
or crows picking apart next summer's crops—
which explains how I came to be here—to wordlessness,
to stand aside and leave the meaning-making
to others, lost in a final mysteriousness and silence.
We know the red and the blue, but what are these lines
of white, the future dictator asks, bending toward
the mirror. He snorts. Ah, that tastes like power,
he thinks, has another drink, and plots the future
of all that oil. He bends again and cocks a famous
eyebrow at his reflection. His refection cocks back.
It's time to invest in the future of global warming,
errrrr, climate change, he croaks. Soon the Northwest
Passage will melt open all by itself. Think of all
my oil, useless these long ages under ice and snow.
I'm thinking you've been quick on my feet
then on to susurrus and color-wheelin'
and fumbling the gubernatorial.
When last I unchecked out
our posse was stolen and recoconutted
for the monkey.
We gotta plant trees for them.
(Green trees grow best in the red-gray aer.)
Roots and ruts and suns and nuts.
Grease-palms sprout like weeds.
Or money in the palm. Politics
is for those without a hobby, I like to say.
Leave the politicking up to God
who knows who's who and who's best at helming
what can't otherwise be shored up, shipped
out, shot down in flames that score the horizon.
God pricks the ears of the devout: if you listen close
you'll hear Him thrumming in my blood,
tumbling all those syllables out to perfect
confusion, a rhyme and reason best left unrehearsed.
The demagogue's deep, register speaks to the worst in us,
and makes him seem honest and trustworthy.
He pimps fear; we revert to scared little boys and girls:
scare me daddy, save me daddy.
His conviction, not his reasons to hold his convictions,
are what matter to him, and that he holds those convictions,
not what they are, are what matter to him.
he enables and takes comfort in fear
with nothing to fear himself
but the absence of fear.
blue on red, blue of noon
fading into a penumbral magenta
where words detach themselves
and turn curiously in the twilight
bombs bursting silently at the
twitching broken pace of those
old films a hand waving
from the motorcade the brown
or maroon of dried blood
beneath the manicured nails
a blues poet in a commi state of mind...
Quick, someone burn the flag. The big chief just drunk Hopi blood all
dressed up in his funky conquistador-crusader-jihad garb look like he's
gonna piss on an old soldier dead of consumption in Lawrence, Kansas or
hacked to pieces on the banks of the Euphrates River. Crooked like death
shit who quotes scripture he shakes your left hand, crosses his right
fingers behind his back, pinches your ass and whispers into your ear: I
believe in Whitman too, and I ain't talking bout your chocolate oil
covered ass. I'm talking bout God. And if I ain't god, I ain't nothing.
And if I ain't nothing, then you sure as hell ain't shit!
Rounding blue wind blowing troubles
troubles me doubles me over.
I pray down there.
Lord weary shoes I got lord weary soul where I
start were I starting here. Weary shoes weary soul.
Little help lord you are little help lord. Send me fir trees.
Send soothing succor sympathy. Soon lord
soon lord I’m breaking up for want of
little or none but still. I’m apart lord a part
falling apart here. The flags are whipping lord.
Amiri Baraka-
"I Will Not Resign, I Will Not Apologize."
Large, proud, white man on shoe shine throne
In Salt Lake City airport eats Ben & Jerry's
Small, dark man kneels before him
I find great pleasure in
Reading Apollinaire's Les onze mille verges
While surrounded by Mormons
A flatulent horse is meant to be funny
"I Will Not Resign, I Will Not Apologize."
& I will always and ever be a histrionic blue state jerk
willing to travel, distribute leaflets
improbably positive as in negatively capable
panicky & resolved, stalwart & operatic
stomping feet & shaking bells on the junta turf
buzzing in doldrums, gesticulating with mudra
as redemption goes to the wire in execution
what is justice? where is peace? raise the alarm!
"they" stole the election! & will again
transmute atrocities, eviscerate the death culture
dismantle the wire cages being prepared for us in Nevada etc…
efficacious! aspiration! potential! be kind!
