517 Social commentaries poems

Is it the glassy, empty potential of the unfilled blouses their prescient capability, flat as catalogued moths hung on racks that require realization? A poem, for instance, pulls something thin over itself. A transparency with a weird fur collar. A skin of microscopic dirtiness. Or, is it the soul comes to clothing already intricately made. seeks a garment a white horse hair to enfold its deviation pink as a petal, foldable as a Kleenex. It’s raining outside the thrift store at night. My clothing is stained by strangers. The poem slips away through slots of lace liquefied as a fat caterpillar dressed in the capsule of a  cocoon.

The government spent a Patricia on me, “a huge waste,” it lamented, “when we could have been spending it on another Nixon,” the government spent all its beauty on the great light leap on the deer- crossing sign — there was hardly any beauty left for anything else in America, and looking around them the government said, “Is there none left? Print more,” you are born, you barely contain yourself, you grow, inside you, someone spends a billion to make prison more luxurious; inside you, someone spends a billion to keep libraries open one hour later; then oh god, you feel wonderful, you must be on welfare, the government spent its whole education on me, at least that is how it feels right now, I am bursting with educational dollars, I am bursting with other dollars as well, I’m rounded up, I’m one long row of ohs, I get so many commas that the sentence doesn’t stop, the dollars in me are a map of  Missouri my mother can’t fold back up, oh no the map is everywhere, but I know the way, I am hot on a trail, I am bursting with the dollars that put that knowing breath in drug dogs, all the spending of  the space program is in me, the stars seem especially close, this is because they are a government handout, they are spending millions on moonlight research, when I am President I will cut the arts and let my right arm flow downhill, I am ready, there is nothing trivial about me left, I am eliminating the penny every second, a dollar is peeled off a roll of  thousands, it is the day, the mint of  it is in my mouth, I open it, completely fresh.

As we sipped and mingled, regaled with oldfangled canapés and beguiled, or entertained at least, by gargled oldies, I disengaged and angled across grass tenderly groomed, past where electric tiki torches gleamed, and, alone, gazed, now truly beguiled, at my hosts’ grand expensive vista, mortgaged, yes, and, yes, remortgaged. A low gold moon glowed against a plush black sky gauzed, even filigreed, with stars. Gowned in old-growth oaks glazed with moonlight over their autumn gilt, the hills glowed in concord with the golden moon. I lingered, glad—discomfited and glad— at what my friends’ greed for beauty afforded me. I argued, self against self, what they’d gained and lost, and me with them, entangled as friendship entangles. I nearly groaned aloud with want before my friend grabbed my elbow. “Gorgeous, eh?” I grinned and agreed, my voice greased with hidden envy. From behind us, grilled sirloin, pedigreed meat sublimating on embers, triggered another hunger. Life was not just good, but too good: aged beef, aged wine after bourbon. We hungered, and all the way back to his engorged glass table, hunger was our guide.

Dentists continue to water their lawns even in the rain: Hands developed with terrible labor by apes Hang from the sleeves of evangelists; There are murdered kings in the light-bulbs outside movie theaters: The coffins of the poor are hibernating in piles of new tires. The janitor sits troubled by the boiler, And the hotel keeper shuffles the cards of insanity. The President dreams of invading Cuba. Bushes are growing over the outdoor grills, Vines over the yachts and the leather seats. The city broods over ash cans and darkening mortar. On the far shore, at Coney Island, dark children Playing on the chilling beach: a sprig of black seaweed, Shells, a skyful of birds, While the mayor sits with his head in his hands.

My ocean town struggles to pick up leaves, offer summer school, and keep our library open. Every day now more men stand at the railroad station, waiting to be chosen for work. Because it’s thought the Hispanics will work for less they get picked first, while the whites and blacks avoid the terror in one another’s eyes. Our handyman, Santos, who expects only what his hands earn, is proud of   his half acre in Guatemala, where he plans to retire. His desire to proceed with dignity is admirable, but he knows that now no one retires, everyone works harder. My father imagined a life more satisfying than the one he managed to lead. He didn’t see himself as uneducated, thwarted, or bitter, but soon-to-be rich. Being rich was his right, he believed. Happiness, I used to think, was a necessary illusion. Now I think it’s just precious moments of relief, like dreams of Guatemala. Sometimes, at night, in winter, surrounded by the significant silence of empty mansions, which once were cottages, where people lived their lives, and now are owned by banks and the absent rich, I like to stand at my window, looking for a tv ’s futile flickering, always surprised to see instead the quaint, porous face of my reflection, immersed in its one abundance.

There is big excitement in C block today. On the window sill, in a plastic ice cream cup a little plant is growing. This is all the men want to talk about: how an apple seed germinated in a crack of damp concrete; how they tore open tea bags to collect the leaves, leached them in water, then laid the sprout onto the bed made of Lipton. How this finger of spring dug one delicate root down into the dark fannings and now two small sleeves of green are pushing out from the emerging tip. The men are tipsy with this miracle. Each morning, one by one, they go to the window and check the progress of the struggling plant. All through the day they return to stand over the seedling and whisper.

The unclean spirits cry out in the body Or mind of the guest Ellen in a loud voice Torment me not, and in the fury of her unclean Hands beating the air in some kind of unending torment— Nobody witnessing could possibly know the event That cast upon her the spell of this enchantment. Almost all the guests are under some kind of enchantment: Of being poor day after day in the same body; Of being witness still to some obscene event; Of listening all the time to somebody’s voice Whispering in the ear things divine or unclean, In the quotidian of unending torment. One has to keep thinking there was some source of torment, Something that happened someplace else, unclean. One has to keep talking in a reasonable voice About things done, say, by a father’s body To or upon the body of Ellen, in enchantment Helpless, still by the unforgotten event Enchanted, still in the old forgotten event A prisoner of love, filthy Ellen in her torment, Guest Ellen in the dining hall in her body, Hands beating the air in her enchantment, Sitting alone, gabbling in her garbled voice The narrative of the spirits of the unclean. She is wholly the possessed one of the unclean. Maybe the spirits came from the river. The enchantment Entered her, maybe, in the Northeast Kingdom. The torment, A thing of the waters, gratuitous event, Came up out of the waters and entered her body And lived in her in torment and cried out in her voice. It speaks itself over and over again in her voice, Cursing maybe or not a familiar obscene event Or only the pure event of original enchantment From the birth of the river waters, the pure unclean Rising from the source of things, in a figure of torment Seeking out Ellen, finding its home in her poor body. Her body witness is, so also is her voice, Of torment coming from unknown event; Unclean is the nature and name of the enchantment.

The unclean spirits cry out in the body Or mind of the guest Ellen in a loud voice Torment me not, and in the fury of her unclean Hands beating the air in some kind of unending torment— Nobody witnessing could possibly know the event That cast upon her the spell of this enchantment. Almost all the guests are under some kind of enchantment: Of being poor day after day in the same body; Of being witness still to some obscene event; Of listening all the time to somebody’s voice Whispering in the ear things divine or unclean, In the quotidian of unending torment. One has to keep thinking there was some source of torment, Something that happened someplace else, unclean. One has to keep talking in a reasonable voice About things done, say, by a father’s body To or upon the body of Ellen, in enchantment Helpless, still by the unforgotten event Enchanted, still in the old forgotten event A prisoner of love, filthy Ellen in her torment, Guest Ellen in the dining hall in her body, Hands beating the air in her enchantment, Sitting alone, gabbling in her garbled voice The narrative of the spirits of the unclean. She is wholly the possessed one of the unclean. Maybe the spirits came from the river. The enchantment Entered her, maybe, in the Northeast Kingdom. The torment, A thing of the waters, gratuitous event, Came up out of the waters and entered her body And lived in her in torment and cried out in her voice. It speaks itself over and over again in her voice, Cursing maybe or not a familiar obscene event Or only the pure event of original enchantment From the birth of the river waters, the pure unclean Rising from the source of things, in a figure of torment Seeking out Ellen, finding its home in her poor body. Her body witness is, so also is her voice, Of torment coming from unknown event; Unclean is the nature and name of the enchantment.

At one friend's home whole arsenals of guns litter the lawn—bright plastic shapes my sons pick their ways between to take proffered popsicles. Later, on evening news, words like "ambush,"  "strike," and "friendly fire" punctuate glowing clips of wreckage in far fields where other mother's children kneel to aim and pray. And though it's clichéd, truth be told, I wish one could keep her boys from growing old and going off to die. Toys need not rush us there. Instinct? No harm? An urge to hoist whatever's there, hard- wired within? Perhaps ignoble, I'm still glad when one spits on his own:They're bad.

The Powers-that-Be decreed that from the—of—the sausage rolls, for reasons Of security, would be contracted to a different firm. They gave the prisoners no reasons. The prisoners complained. We cannot reproduce his actual words here, since their spokesman is alleged To be a sub-commander of a movement deemed to be illegal. An actor spoke for him in almost-perfect lip-synch:It’s not the quality We’re giving off about. Just that it seems they’re getting smaller. We’re talking quantity. His ‘Belfast’ accent wasn’t West enough. Is the H in H-Block aitch or haitch? Does it matter?What we have we hold?Our day will come? Give or take an inch? Well, give an inch and someone takes an effing mile. Everything is in the ways You say them. Like, the prison that we call Long Kesh is to the Powers-that-Be The Maze.