517 Social commentaries poems

Wife two was a stripper. And sweet, as well. He traded her in for me. To people I don't know, I say she was a dancer. I watch them, puzzled, wonder how anyone could not love a ballerina. And you have to question a guy like that: trading in a sweet stripper for me. Not a homemaker. Not home much at all. Not sweet. More like my grandfather, Jimmy Grieco. Mean. My mother likes to describe the blue-sky day when she bought me a helium balloon and I let it go. I was six. I begged for another. She said,okay, but, if you let this one go, I’m really going to be mad. I nodded, took the string in my hand, held tight, and then opened my hand flat so the balloon lifted and its string slipped up and away.You were never sweet, my mother says. *** In Vegas, a few weeks ago, Jimmy and I sorted photographs in his double-wide just off Boulder Highway. My mother stood on the sidelines. She hates how I ask Jimmy for the hard stories. Tell me about the moonshine. Tell me about the dead kids. Tell me how your mother saved the family by burning down the farm. Jimmy’s crooked finger points to a picture of the family. That was Leonard.He was deaf and dumb. Died at twelve. That was Vincent.The baby who fell off the staircase without a rail. Dead at two. Then there's his mother, surrounded by her children.She was tough, he says.Tough. When Chicago’s Black Hand demanded ten thousand dollars, she stuffed five grand in her apron, grabbed my grandfather—then five—and took him to deliver the money.That's all you'll ever get, she said,and don’t touch my kids or I’ll kill you. *** My grandfather never asks about the first or second wife. I don’t have to tell him that ballerina-fable. He knows I’m three and mean. He knows it for his whole life. His first, my grandmother, was like sugar. He burned her, abandoned her in LA, raced to Mexico, paved road turning to dirt; he ate prickly pear, maybe, on the way to his quick divorce. And, though he won’t tell this story, his own father lived, first, with a sweet woman on a wheat farm, far south in Craco, Italy. He boarded a ship, told his wife he’d send for her, and then fled to New York. And in an apartment on Mulberry Street, he met up with the new girlfriend and they disappeared into their new world. She wasn’t pretty.She was tough. She got busted twice for making moonshine. Her sons loved her. She was mean.

The column of the commander yielded to our first sweep. Even the water jar for our diggers we set on the south wall of the general’s tomb without knowing it. So we began. His armies retook Nubia, Libya, and the Levant, lost under the sway-bellied lantern-jawed Sun King. Overseer of all scribes, Overseer of the priests of Horus, Grain-giver to all lands, Royal chief of staff, Regent, the general had himself carried on his palanquin through the wailing processions to oversee the work on this place. And so carved, thus: one of his men punches a Nubian in the face. The general was low-born; everything had counted and he knew what counted most. His platoons lift open palms towards Tutankhamun. The general towers as a sway-girdled go-between at court for beseeching Libyans. Only the pearl-handled revolvers do not figure here, or the comeback challenge Nuts! in the Ardennes winter forest. He had himself carried beyond the busy streets of the dead in the city of the dead sloping back from the bluff to a higher, private terrace looking across to Memphis. But then he rose to Pharaoh. So he is not here. Instead his first wife lay here, and then his queen also. At his own royal tomb in the Valley, where the designs remained uncarved, sketching idea along stone, he does not rest either. The fine picklock hand got past Anubis and the reared serpents, and got to him, the Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt. It got past Truth with her high feather, which moved at the slightest disturbance. The general did deep obeisance to her. He is not here. What at last moves the heart? So much already moved, even in his own century, architects prying loose mud bricks of the core for new tombs. Cult funded in perpetuity gone in two generations. So Coleridge, who was indisposed that day, prudently remained in the circle of lime trees while his friends went off on their walk through the countryside. He followed them in his mind. That way no one would have to dismantle Horeheb’s outer court to secure bricks for the statuary room, and facing stones. He cast his mind outward, a net over his dear ones, sending them at pace through the middle distance of steeples, hill lines, and the murder of Lamb’s mother by his sister, a brief madness, thus through the appropriately middle distance where such things are built and performed in fact, no closer, no farther, then on out to the cleansing rim of apocalypse, evening in the bath of waning fire, one bird stitching the whole veil of showings tight along its upper hem— though he was not there, he could tell them that none the less he was next to his words and his word was with them, even unto the rim of their wandering and their turning back. One dome of air and fire. But he was not there. Nor I here. What removes the heart from what moves it? As if I were the lecturer before a congress of doctors, his clinching point approaching, when suddenly he stared out in silence, and at last said, Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues, the only thing I can see at this moment inside my brain, such as it is, is a little white mouse chasing a little white ball.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

In cities there are tangerine briefcases on the down-platform and jet parkas on the up-platform; in the mother of cities there is equal anxiety at all terminals. West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false escape, South steam in milk. The centres of cities move westwards; the centre of the mother of cities has disappeared. North the great cat, East the great water, South the great fire, West the great arrow. In cities the sons of women become fathers; in the mother of cities the daughters of men have failed to become mothers. East the uneager fingers, South the damp cave, West the chained ankle, North the rehearsed cry. Cities are built for trade, where women and men may freely through knowing each other become more like themselves; the mother of cities is built for government, where women and men through fearing each other become more like each other than they care to be. South the short, West the soap, North the sheets, East the shivers. In cities the church fund is forever stuck below blood heat; in the mother of cities the church is a community arts centre. West the Why-not, North the Now-then, East the End- product, South the Same-again. In cities nobody can afford the price; in the mother of cities nobody dares to ask the price. North the telephone smile, East the early appointment, South the second reminder, West the hanging button. In cities the jealous man is jealous because he is himself in his imagination unfaithful; in the mother of cities the jealous man is jealous because he reads the magazines. East the endless arrival, South the astounding statistic, West the wasted words, North the night of nights. In cities we dream about our desires; in the mother of cities we dream about our dreams.

for Ed. Baynard buildings blend into the sky     the work goes on from where we left off and consciousness, by rights, is doors and windows a spritz of color in this life is what we can expect if we can expect anything and a breeze or two a quiet day     a little sun that 5-letter word "money" relying on no one for pleasure than the weather and the then discovered leisure to lean a little into more than can be expected let me explain we feel the heart against the ribs we feel the leg against the chair we feel two eyes linked as one looking into your two and rubbing your brow like a finger taking the sweat lengthwise off the brow and drying the forehead which is suddenly your we feel the nouns make emotions out of a sense of easiness the ability to relax the desire to simplify what we suddenly discover is meant because we haven't paid attention to exemplify something what it is, we forget we know it was something special something out of the ordinary a nagging something or other stupidly repeating itself in a vague way on the sill when we think the water still that's the silliest thing I ever heard of hearing everything through the air conditioner above the bottom line

how to explain brazil to an extraterrestrial: your face on a flag. they’d recognize you as leader and knock you off. dirty part of the conquest. but it already happened, in another shape: aerial view of the amazon, a hundred-odd hydroelectric plants to fry your eggs in the microwave. and they’d finish you off: just part of the conquest. and what if they came to tour the waterfalls? or to be taught by the elite how to make a democracy? the spaceships cover the sky completely. all the offices and fast food joints declare an end to the working day. cockroaches and rats fled first. it’s christmas, carnival, easter, our lady of aparecida, and the final judgment all at once. lovers fuck for the last time. atms dry heave. the supermarket was a cemetery! the malls, the freeways! to explain civil unions to an iguana, to explain political alliances to a cat, to explain climate change to an aquarium turtle. it’s done, already. now, wait. eat an activia. dwell in philosophy. imagine! in our tropical country ... disastrous! not one river more. tragic! worse than locusts, your marvelous hydroelectric plants will be seen, in flames, from sirius: “my country was a sweet corn pamonha that a starving alien put in the microwave.” watch us burn: possible epitaph. Translated from the Portuguese

Broadway past Lincoln Center and the wind is up so seems to speak saw you through the glass standing in line I swear a quiver played on your lips you were leafing through his book… —years it’s been years since Corona Heights, backing into him: dribble, hook, swish… …that beige comfy couch, sipping a stem of wine, his cat in my lap * * * The Townhouse Saturday night—shoulder to shoulder pushing toward the piano he stops to squeeze by; his eyes  mine clench  unclench… …What was it we found in common over drink   smoke   talk? A college campus —his son, his daughter * * * Earlier that night I rose to the city’s surface steam through the grate, crossed crossed again down 7th past Carnegie Hall, the greek joint as imagined, chic —unlike the shirt D wore (the fur of his arms) at Castro and Market waiting for the light: words were struck like steel and flint that distant August day…Then his visit to Spain, mine to New Canaan—walking through the Morgan with him. And what our mouths unfurled across a table of olives years later—last night… Dropping me off at 58th he reaches for the door I’m fumbling to open, leans close and plants what I’ve missed all these years

See, it’s a kind of crime scene, as if the mind were a dime novel, a scrim of need and semen, all cinder and siren, a dim prison where the miser dines on rinds of desire, and the sinner, sincere as denim, repeats Eden’s demise — that luckless toss of dice. Yet here at the rim of this demesne a mitigating mise-en-scène: a close-up of her mother stirring rice, a glass of sparkling cider, a mince pie spliced in — not to rescind or mend: what mind denies mercies mine in the end.

My mother and I are on the front porch lighting each other's cigarettes as if we were on a ten-minute break from our jobs at being a mother and son, just ten minutes to steal a moment of freedom before clocking back in, before putting the aprons back on, the paper hats, washing our hands twice and then standing behind the counter again, hoping for tips, hoping the customers will be nice, will say some kind word, the cool front yard before us and the dogs in the backyard shitting on everything. We are hunched over, two extras on the set of The Night of the Hunter. I am pulling a second cigarette out of the pack, a swimmer rising from a pool of other swimmers. Soon we will go back inside and sit in the yellow kitchen and drink the rest of the coffee and what is coming to kill us will pour milk into mine and sugar into hers.

to John Logan 1 I wonder how many old men last winter Hungry and frightened by namelessness prowled The Mississippi shore Lashed blind by the wind, dreaming Of suicide in the river. The police remove their cadavers by daybreak And turn them in somewhere. Where? How does the city keep lists of its fathers Who have no names? By Nicollet Island I gaze down at the dark water So beautifully slow. And I wish my brothers good luck And a warm grave. 2 The Chippewa young men Stab one another shrieking Jesus Christ. Split-lipped homosexuals limp in terror of assault. High school backfields search under benches Near the Post Office. Their faces are the rich Raw bacon without eyes. The Walker Art Center crowd stare At the Guthrie Theater. 3 Tall Negro girls from Chicago Listen to light songs. They know when the supposed patron Is a plainclothesman. A cop’s palm Is a roach dangling down the scorched fangs Of a light bulb. The soul of a cop’s eyes Is an eternity of Sunday daybreak in the suburbs Of Juárez, Mexico. 4 The legless beggars are gone, carried away By white birds. The Artificial Limbs Exchange is gutted And sown with lime. The whalebone crutches and hand-me-down trusses Huddle together dreaming in a desolation Of dry groins. I think of poor men astonished to waken Exposed in broad daylight by the blade Of a strange plough. 5 All over the walls of comb cells Automobiles perfumed and blindered Consent with a mutter of high good humor To take their two naps a day. Without sound windows glide back Into dusk. The sockets of a thousand blind bee graves tier upon tier Tower not quite toppling. There are men in this city who labor dawn after dawn To sell me my death. 6 But I could not bear To allow my poor brother my body to die In Minneapolis. The old man Walt Whitman our countryman Is now in America our country Dead. But he was not buried in Minneapolis At least. And no more may I be Please God. 7 I want to be lifted up By some great white bird unknown to the police, And soar for a thousand miles and be carefully hidden Modest and golden as one last corn grain, Stored with the secrets of the wheat and the mysterious lives Of the unnamed poor.