Poetry 3

WHY DON'T AMERICANS LOVE AMERICANS

1. Whisper

And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb.

It's not important, whether it was whole, broken, or never more than a whisper,The question is: Was he or she loved?
The journey takes her into a Brothers Grimm ForestTo a clinic disguised as a cottage made of cakeBut once inside no babe will jump for joy at the prospectOf a belly full of sugar.
There, a life is not measured as a whole,Not measured in a lifetimeBut in weeks, months, trimesters.Certain death in the most fragrant bower.The whisper's fate is no secret.Inside the womb waits Atropos.
Can a whisper feel pain?Can a whisper die?That which cannot be bornCannot die.
What exactly was that thing inside her?A whisper is not a howlingBut howling follows a whisper.

The only lies that hurt us are those we tell ourselves.
Abortion is a game of ring-around-the-rosy—one trimester, two trimesters, three trimesters,We all fall down.
Pro-Choice. Pro-Life. Let the Devil throw the dice.
Count Choice on one hand:Early Medication. Vacuum Aspiration. Dilation and Evacuation.Labor Induction. Hysterectomy.All fall down.
Pro-Choice. Pro-Life. Let the Devil throw the dice.
A woman's body is a miracle.Until it is no such thing and the lifeInside her is not a life at all.At most a kind of a life.Say, a whisper of a life.
This most sacred revelation of all human endeavorsIs only a whisper.One cannot harm a whisper.
As a practical matter, and we are if nothing else,A practical people.No one present heard a thing.Not so much as a whisper.
And if one curious, indistinct sound was heard,God knows, whatever was heard wasn't a whisper.Wind perhaps, or a snap of gingerbread.
It's not important, whether it was whole, broken, or never more than a whisper,The question is: Was he or she was loved?

2. Active Shooter

Remember the Alamo.

He was, they say, broken, but was he loved?
I tell you, there is not one unnecessary death in America.Everything works as a whole and everything is necessary.Everything good has a twin that is evil.The United States would not be the United StatesWithout the requisite number of murdered men,Women and children.
We were always a nation of children playing cowboys and IndiansCops and robbers. Bang, bang, you're dead.
America is the world's glorious store of excess.That is our reason for being.Excess, our gift to our neighbors.Excess, glorious excess is our gift to the world.
Every generation of Americans is obliged to exceed—Whether across the Great Plains, in Europe, Vietnam,In Iraq, Afghanistan, or in an invisible little town in Texas.
Could that broken kid have done what he did without firearms?Of course not. But America needs him just as he is.The NEA and AFT and The Universal Music Group, Goldman Sachs,The Sierra Club, and the Sinaloa Cartel need him.Rockstar Games needs him, and, if he survives being a Rockstar,The Pentagon will take him.Every stop on Route 66 from "sea to shining sea" needs him.Even the flight path between Los Angeles and New York andThe angelic Gulf Stream jets that slide over flyover statesAnd far and beyond their dying cities need him.

Bang, bang, you're dead.He was, they say, broken, but was he loved?
Demonic souls who commit unspeakable crimes are our broken children, too.And, we must love them as much as we love our children romping in Martha's Vineyard,East Hampton, and Malibu.We must go out of our way to love themIn Camden, New Jersey, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.And, yes, even dusty, sorry Uvalde.
We have to love our broken boys and girls.We have to cover their faces with kisses.They are all our children.Even the homicidal ones, because in their heartsThey all want to be Tom Sawyer.
That curious sound at midnight all over America?Are the moans of all the mothers and fathers who cry themselves to sleep.All the melancholy mothers and fathers who know their broken childrenWon't wake to the smell of sizzling bacon and two eggs,Served sunny side up.
The New York Times lies after every incident, its editorsLie to themselves, the better to lie to you.Big lies. White lies. Black lies.
I tell you, there is not one too many pistols in the hands of children.Nor is there a shadow-dwelling animal stamped AK47.Not one more prowling in Uvalde than in the City of Brotherly Love,A city bursting with broken children.
I tell you there is not one unnecessary death in America.Everything works as a whole and everything is necessary.Everything good has a twin that is evil.The United States would not be the United StatesWithout the requisite number of murders.
He was, they say, broken, but was he loved?

3. Greta Thunberg

1. The Children's Crusade

She was, they say, broken, but was she loved?
Weather was mostly the concern of those who workedWith two hands and a backbone—farmers and those who toiledOutside The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
Climate, which once resided like the old godsIn the heavens, has come down to earthTo turn forests to matchsticks and cities into ovens.
I tell you, the sky is not falling, but Greta says the crack of thunderHere, and 100-year flood there, are signs of the long-prayed-for apocalypse.Not even sweet Antarctica, the earth's bluest work, is safe.No fieldmouse, no elephant left, not even the petting zoo.
We were warned when she screeched: "You stole my childhood"While skipping over fair seas and following winds.
Good God, everything that built strong bodies in 12 ways is guilty.Wonder Bread stole her childhood, even Ivory soap stole her childhood.The humble baseball? Catch it, it's a thief.
A new orthodoxy would have us throw out the baby with the bathwaterBecause five billion superfluous mothers collaborated with King coal,global finance, and the shimmering princes and princesses of Silicon Valley.
We ruined everything, and now everything must be built from scratch.Rebuilt by Greta and her Children's Crusade.By children reared, but never imagined, by Tolkien or Lewis or DisneyOr by the horned beasts on Sesame Street.
I tell you, the sky is not falling.Children who have never changed a tire will raise on our ruins a utopia.Route 66 is dead. There will not be ice cream for everyone.

2. Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Greta On Over

Could that broken kid have done what she didWithout The New York Times collecting her tearsIn a crystal vial?
Without sentimental American lords and ladies of mammonWho weep at the thought of trailer parks and their occupantsBlown off the face of the earth.
Without Hollywood producers and their twinkling starsFeverishly writing checksTo save every African made of dust and boneFleeing to the U.S. for a glass of lemonade or to ItalyFor a flute of Prosecco.
She was, they say, broken, but was she loved?
The global sibyl, her scrunched little face so AryanGoebbels would have put it on a Nazi postage stamp.
I tell you, the sky is not falling, but she says this crack of thunderHere, and that 100-year flood there, are signs of the coming global Dust Bowl.A shake-and-bake world, where not even sweet AntarcticaThe earth's bluest work, Is safe.
Those who worship at her Temple will not be sparedTheir future, too, only darkening skies, a cruel impetuous sunSpitting jellied gasoline.Malibu parched as the Horn of Africa.New York City under ten or twenty feet of water.There will be no place for buffalo to roam.
"Put the pedal to the metal," and you are guilty.Shout out "Dinner's ready," and you're guilty.Whisper into your lover's ear, "Throw caution to the wind"And you're guilty.You're already guilty if you haven't taken the Dutch Way Out.
I tell you, the sky is not falling.Children who have never changed a tire will build on our ruins a utopia.Route 66 is dead. There will not be ice cream for everyone.
She was, they say, broken, but was she loved?

4. Woke

—Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

You cannot say homeless? There is a home for everyoneTucked inside a white picket fence, where even before you open the doorYou're welcomed by the smell of baking bread.Homeless is an anachronism, and those unfortunates are not unfortunate by chance.There is a cause for every condition and person or systemTo blame for it. All are punish'd.
You cannot say poor, there are no poor, there are only the marginalized.Who, through no fault of their own, find no doors open to themBut the Kingdom of Heaven's.Poor is an anachronism, and those people labeled poor weren't relievedOf their identity, or stripped of their dignity, by accident.There are parties who must answer for this miscarriage of justice.All are punish'd.
You cannot be heard using the word Eskimo; the word is demeaning, derivedFrom Danish, the cleanest people in Europe.See: Inuit, the abused indigenous people of the real North Country.Eskimo is an anachronism that feeds on the heart of humanity.Ask any Ainu or Jew or Palestinian.All victims since Homo sapiensStole the Neanderthal's women and pushed aside Homo erectus.All are punish'd.

That's the light the lover flicks as he follows the joys of consummation with the joys of a cigarette.—Philip Larkin
What could be more stupid or self-destructive than to valorizeThe joys of sex—more to the point, male, heterosexual sex.And, then, repeat the lie regarding pleasure and cigarettes.If I failed you, don't blame me, blame the text.
That word, consummation, can't be right.That's white privilege burrowing like a worm.A four-syllable word. A racist euphemism, because understanding itMight require a dictionary, the presumed ownership of which is inherently racist.If I failed you, don't blame me, blame the text.
Am I to be punish'd, too.Is this poem evidence of White Fragility?Am I lashing outTearing at my own flesh, like suicidal Hercules?That tired symbol of toxic masculinity, mad and eternally flexed.If I failed you, don't blame me, blame the text.
Will some of these words creep by the cancelling cultured?Will there be some reader who takes pleasure in their flickerWith a light as delicate as secrets, lover to lover, kept?If I failed you, don't blame me, blame the text.
Am I to be punish'd, too.It isn't the pen or the pencil, it's the scribbles that are the pest.Poets don't write the lists, but they remain a threat to those who doAnd those with the power to break, repress, even to arrest.If I failed you, don't blame me, blame the text
Am I to be punish'd, too.Poets are the nation's black sheep, a queer sect, that mocks the bodyPolitics, by painting white spaces over the nation's speckled lies.So many lies, so few poets—run the numbers, it's not complex.If I fail you, don't blame me, blame the text.
Am I to be punish'd, too.

5. Cancel Culture

—Pablo Neruda

There are corpses, clammy slabs for feet, there is death in the bones, like a pure sound, a bark without its dog.

I read an article that gave me pause,reporting recent flim and flam that confirmed the cancelationof some recently dead and already damned.This morning it's Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, and Woody Allen.Formerly beloved men of letters who wrote with both caresses and talons.Forgive me for stopping here, but I could not resist,The irony is just too cold, too rich.
There isn't a village in America where there isn't a holocaust museumA calendar that doesn't mark this or that day of remembrance.But here are three post-war American JewsNeatly laid out, face up, like slaughtered Belarusian Jews.Forgive me for stopping here, but I could not resist,The irony is just too cold, too rich.
The men may have dug themselves into a pit,but it was a pasty-face, half-Jewish eunuch who wrote with an eraser and buried them.And, pissing on the patriarchs' graves, squeaked as he turned the knife.His hope: to persuade God to erase their names from the book of life.Forgive me for stopping here, but I could not resist,The irony is just too cold, too rich.
Yes, Mr. Roth, there is a plot against America, but you failed to get it right.Yes, Mr. Mailer, there is a castle in the forest, but no armies of the night.I'm sorry Mr. Allen, a man can live without feathers, but not without his wife.Forgive me for stopping here, but I could not resist,The irony is just too cold, too rich.

The stars are not wanted now: put out everyone.Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;For nothing now can ever come to any good.—W.H. Auden
No one can be forgiven, know where the fault lies.Those who transgressed, transgressed, shaking fists at the sky.Now that they're dead, you'll do right to walk on by.As none deserve your pity and all deserved to die.You've disturbed the night's still waters and awakened the old gods.You will reach into a dark, where no hand will take yours.
Disinter the dead, desecrate the remains, silence those alive.Only alive until, from lack for love, one after another, they die.No place in the pantheon provides immunity.Good luck to those who disagree and deny their many fragilities.You've disturbed the night's still waters and awakened the old gods.You will reach into a dark, where no hand will take yours.
Once admired, adored, published, and honored for throwing down a gauntletToday gone or going and, kicked while down, none will get back up.Their crimes deemed unforgiveable by those cowering behind their hate.Their hate is relentless, their relentlessness will not abate.You've disturbed the night's still waters and awakened old gods.You will reach into a dark, where no hand will take yours.
The point was always to murder. Cancel is a cheap disguise.Worn by fools, fakes, and frauds with mischief in their eyes.Fame never equaled power, patricide is alive.If the Devil laughs at fame, don't pretend to be surprised.You've disturbed the night's still waters and awakened old gods.You will reach into a dark, where no hand will take yours.

6. White Supremacy

—Artur Rimbaud

In summer, especially, stupid, he persisted / In locking himself up in the latrines / Where he reflected in peace, inhaling deeply.

Patti Smith will be the first to admit her high school boyfriend was a White supremacist.Unfair, ridiculous, petty, if you insist, but …
Vision, a product of leisure, is a White man's prerogativeor a precocious mama's boy, who lived his life under her immense dark wings.
Poetry is all the armor an enfant provocateur needs, if he is White,because poets, even those who yelp and hiss, are not a threat to anyone.
It's not glorious to poke Papa in the eyeOr to slam the door in Mama's face.Merde, is only shit, unless you're a White teenager and then its possibilities are endless.
So the worst that the little White boy had to endure was being sent to bed without dinner.The worst of poets are only naughty—derangement of senses, no means to no end.Madness draws no one closer to God nor man nor woman.
Naughty is a White man's prerogative—as is escaping from the tormentsof blistering morality, scot-free.
Artur is not Huckleberry Finn, he's Tom Sawyer.Artur realized this, and also that he'd wipe his nose, and ass,and torch his rags and opera cape.
Adolescence is a White boy's privilege—poor Verlaine, only a phase, a passing fancy.Visions are a counterfeit currency, accepted only in "splendid cities."Cities he'd find later in Arabia and Africa, when he was a splendid young man.
What shame he would have felt had he knew his work would find a homein America's most domesticated spaces: used paperbacks in the hands of high school rebels.And, in liberal arts colleges, where he would find love in the arms of puer aeterni,coeds, and rock & rollers, all who knew in their hearts that Drunken Boats sink.
Patti Smith will be the first to admit her high school boyfriend was a White supremacist.Unfair, ridiculous, petty, if you insist, but.

One evening, I sat Beauty on my lap.— Artur Rimbaud.
To repudiate one's parents is not rebellion,it is not following in Lucifer's Hoofprints,it is just another White man's prerogative.It's as common, expected, and ignored as rebellion in heaven.
But good girls love bad boys, and Patti Smith was a good girlwhose high school boyfriend was a White supremacist.Hip, hip Harar, the world is my oyster.
In France there was no sitting sitting duck like the Catholic ChurchLong ago stripped of God by Danton, Marat, and RobespierreMythical, demonic men, who worshipped a cult of reason.
Rimbaud was not a demonic man and his poetry didn't twist reason.Revolutionary? Heavens no,His poetry only scandalized poets and then, only for a short time.
"The I who was someone else"Feared nothing more than his mom's wrath.Who he reimaged the queen of queens and mother of witches.All that Absinthe, opium and hashish gone to waste.
Was it his absent Dad who stepped out of visions of chaos?He, the Angels of flame and iceThe "genie," who Artur followed to Africa.
At twenty, he came of age, walked away from nights sweats and terrorsOf pimples, premature ejaculation, and poetry.Without a so much as "by your leave"As only someone with unfathomable White privilege can.
Reinventing himself as a man of business, in Europe, Egypt, Java, AdanThe Playboy of the Western world.Twist the muses' arms and only money is left.
Patti's boyfriend became a perfect, petite bourgeois.All propriety, profit, all business until death.What did Kierkegaard write, "the petty bourgeois is spiritless"?
So is a spent, fashionable ex-pat, who returned homeA penitent broken by sorrow, pain and regretCrying out for his mother, sister, and, to no one's surprise the Church.Hip, hip Harar, the world is my oyster.

On Hearing From Tom Hart That Matthew Courtney Is Dead

The news arrives the way news always arrives:sideways, in the middle of something else.A name. A date. A city.The usual coordinates of loss.
I remember his laugh first.Then his hands.Then the way he held a glassas if it might escape.
We were young together once.That is the only way to say it.We were young togetherand now we are not.

Donald Sawyer's Dead or The Last of the Gray Flanneled Men

He wore the suit every day.He wore the suit and the tie and the hat.He wore the whole costume of his erawithout irony, without complaint.
He believed in the company.He believed in the pension.He believed in the handshakeand the man behind it.
He is gone now.The suit is gone.The era is gone.The handshake is gone.
What remains is the shape of himin the chair where he satreading the paperevery morninguntil he didn't.

Enameled Twilight

The sky at this hour is a kind of promise.Not the promise of tomorrowbut the promise of this:this particular light,this particular color,this particular momentbefore the dark comes in.
I have stood here before.I will stand here again.Each time the sky is different.Each time I am different.Each time it is enough.

In a Church by Chance

I came in out of the rain.I came in out of the rain and sat downin the last pewand waited for the rain to stop.
The light came through the windowsthe way light comes through windows in churches:slowly, deliberately,as if it had somewhere to bebut was in no hurry to get there.
I stayed longer than the rain.

Legacy

What do we leave behind?The things we made.The things we broke.The things we meant to fix.
The people we loved.The people we failed.The people who are still waitingfor an apologythat will not come.
The words we said.The words we didn't.The silence between themwhich was also a kind of word.

Moon From the Corner of Charlton and 6th Avenue, September 19, 2002

Full and low and orangeover the buildings.The kind of moon that makes you stop.
A year ago the towers were still there.A year ago the sky was different.A year ago we were different.
The moon doesn't know any of this.The moon is just the moon.Full and low and orangeover the buildings.Making us stop.

The Three Gorges of the Yangtze River

They are drowning the valley.They are drowning the villages.They are drowning the graves.
A million people moved.A thousand years of historyunder water.
Progress, they call it.The future, they call it.The lights of the citiesburning brighton the other side of the dam.

Fallen (On Broadway)

The marquee is dark.The marquee is dark and the street is wetand the cabs go bywithout stopping.
This is where it happened.This is where the lights went out.This is where the curtain came downfor the last time.
The marquee is dark.The street is wet.The show is over.The show is always over.

Fallen 2

And yet.And yet the city goes on.And yet the lights come back.And yet another show opensin another theateron another night.
And yet we come.We come in out of the rain.We sit in the dark.We wait for the curtain to rise.
And yet.

Girl in a Chocolate Shop

She is arranging the truffles.She is arranging the truffles with the careof someone arranging flowersor stars.
Each one in its place.Each one perfect.Each one waitingto be chosen.
She does not eat them.She only arranges them.This is her art.This is her patience.This is her day.

Good Night

Good night to the city.Good night to the lights.Good night to the noiseand the silence under it.
Good night to the ones who are sleeping.Good night to the ones who are not.Good night to the ones who are somewhere betweensleeping and not sleeping,dreaming and not dreaming,here and not here.
Good night.Good night.Good night.

How I Know She's Coming Home

The dog knows first.The dog knows before the key in the lock,before the footstep on the stair,before any signal I can read.
The dog lifts his head.The dog goes to the door.The dog waits.
And then she is there.And then she is home.And the dog was rightas the dog always is.

Winter Walk No. 1, 1995

The cold is a fact.The cold is a fact and the street is emptyand the trees are bareand the light is the light of winter:flat, white, without mercy.
I am walking because I need to walk.I am walking because the apartment is too smallfor what I am feeling.
The cold is a fact.The street is empty.I am walking.This is enough.