517 Social commentaries poems

There’s a truth limits man A truth prevents his going any farther The world is changing The world knows it’s changing Heavy is the sorrow of the day The old have the look of doom The young mistake their fate in that look That is truth But it isn’t all truth Life has meaning And I do not know the meaning Even when I felt it were meaningless I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning It wasn’t all frolic poesy There were dues to pay Summoning Death and God I’d a wild dare to tackle Them Death proved meaningless without Life Yes the world is changing But Death remains the same It takes man away from Life The only meaning he knows And usually it is a sad business This Death I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy I am able to contradict my beliefs I am able able Because I want to know the meaning of everything Yet sit I like a brokenness Moaning: Oh what responsibility I put on thee Gregory Death and God Hard hard it’s hard I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant

1 That’s right, I’m talking to you, not him or her. 2 You have been randomly selected for a security check. It has nothing to do with you, your physical features, or your name. 3 Do you now belong or have you ever belonged to a radical political organization? Do you have weapons training? Have you ever visited a training camp? Did you pack your own bags? 4 You people send your sons and daughters on suicide missions. You animals, you! 5 If you will please step aside. If you will please remove your shoes. If you will please come with me. If you will please leave the premises. If you will please not harm us. 6 May you live in interesting times. 7 As Americans, you know exactly what I’m talking about. As Americans, you may be subject to this. As Americans, you should be worried. 8 Is it you who are to blame? 9 We cannot help you. There is nothing we can do for you. 10 The agents came looking for you, at your father’s house. 11 They wanted to ask you questions. 12 I heard about you being suspected, detained, interrogated, jailed without charges, prosecuted with secret evidence, found not guilty. There’s no sense in you making a fuss— they let you go free, didn’t they? 13 Once you begin to see you differently, as separate from you, wholly other from you, then you can become like us. 14 What has history made of you? 15 Let’s get to the point: It was always like looking in the mirror— that face is you. I am you.

Watts bleeds leaving stained reminders on dusty sidewalks. Here where I strut alone as glass lies broken by my feet and a blanket of darkness is slung across the wooden shacks of nuetsra colonia. Watts bleeds dripping from carcasses of dreams: Where despair is old people sitting on torn patio sofas with empty eyes and children running down alleys with big sticks. Watts bleeds on vacant lots and burned-out buildings– temples desolated by a people’s rage. Where fear is a deep river. Where hate is an overgrown weed. Watts bleeds even as we laugh, recall good times, drink and welcome daylight through the broken windshield of an old Impala. Here is the Watts of my youth, where teachers threw me from classroom to classroom, not knowing where I could fit in. Where I learned to fight or run, where I zigzagged down alleys, jumped over fences, and raced by graffiti on crumbling factory walls. Where we played between boxcars, bleeding from broken limbs and torn flesh, and where years later we shot up carga in the playground of our childhood. Watts bleeds as the shadow of the damned engulfs all the chinga of our lives. In the warmth of a summer night, gunshots echo their deadly song through the silence of fear; prelude to a heartbeat. Watts bleeds as I bled getting laid-off from work, standing by my baby’s crib, touching his soft check and fingering his small hand as dreams shatter again, dreams of fathers for little men. Watts bleeds and the city hemorrhages, unable to stop the flow from this swollen and festering sore. Oh bloom, you trampled flower! Come alive as once you tried to do from the ashes. Watts, bleeding and angry, you will be free.

man, he said, sitting on the steps your car sure needs a wash and wax job I can do it for you for 5 bucks, I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything I need. I gave him the 5 and went upstairs. when I came down 4 hours later he was sitting on the steps drunk and offered me a can of beer. he said he’d get the car the next day. the next day he got drunk again and I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of wine. his name was Mike a world war II veteran. his wife worked as a nurse. the next day I came down and he was sitting on the steps and he said, you know, I been sitting here looking at your car, wondering just how I was gonna do it, I wanna do it real good. the next day Mike said it looked like rain and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain. the next day it looked like rain again. and the next. then I didn’t see him anymore. a week later I saw his wife and she said, they took Mike to the hospital, he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from the drinking. listen, I told her, he said he was going to wax my car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my car. he’s in the critical ward, she said, he might die . . . I was sitting in their kitchen drinking with his wife when the phone rang. she handed the phone to me. it was Mike. listen, he said, come down and get me, I can’t stand this place. I drove on down there, walked into the hospital, walked up to his bed and said, let’s go Mike. they wouldn’t give him his clothes so Mike walked to the elevator in his gown. we got on and there was a kid driving the elevator and eating a popsicle. nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown, he said. you just drive this thing, kid, I said, we’ll worry about the gown. Mike was all puffed-up, triple size but I got him into the car somehow and gave him a cigarette. I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until 11 p.m. then went upstairs . . . where’s Mike? I asked his wife 3 days later, you know he said he was going to wax my car. Mike died, she said, he’s gone. you mean he died? I asked. yes, he died, she said. I’m sorry, I said, I’m very sorry it rained for a week after that and I figured the only way I’d get the 5 back was to go to bed with his wife but you know she moved out 2 weeks later an old guy with white hair moved in there and he had one blind eye and played the French Horn. there was no way I could make it with him.

when the cultivators of corpses are busy seeding plague across vast acres of the land, choking schools and churches in the motley toxins of grief, breeding virile shoots of violence so soon verdant even fools fear to tread in their wake :: when all known tools of resistance are clutched in the hands of the vile like a wilting bouquet, cut from their roots, while the disempowered slice smiles across their own faces and hide the wet knives in writhing thickets of hair for future use :: when breathing in the ashen traces of dreams deferred, the detonator’s ticking a queer echo that amplifies instead of fading :: when there- you-are is where-you-were and the sunset groans into the atlantic, setting blue fire to dark white bones.

I see into them as they see out of me & dissolve the wattage to avoid future legends young pharaohs on Fillmore cracking dutches it is a lonely frontier by contrast forgotten game skulking around big hearts, small temper thine absence overflows thine presence undoes do not attempt to circle the inferno a tremor in the throne is a tremor in the throne

That's why we're here, said Julio Lugo to the Globe. Sox fans booed poor Lugo, booed his at-bat after he dropped the ball in the pivotal fifth. That ball,I got to it,I just couldn't come up with it. Lugo wants you to know he is fast: a slower player wouldn't even get close enough to get booed. Lugo wants you to know he's only human:We're human beings. That's why we're here. If not, I would have wings. I'd be beside God right now. I'd be an angel. But I'm not an angel. I'm a human being that lives right here. Next day, all is forgiven. Lugo's home run, Lugo's sweet comment to the press. I wanted to make a poster like the ones that say It's my birthday! or First Time at Fenway! or, pathetic,ESPN. Posterboard, permanent marker to say Lugo:me,too. I'm a human being that lives right here, decided it's too esoteric, too ephemeral a reference, but it's true: Oh, Lugo, Julio Lugo, I'm here with you.

We the people, we the one times 320 million, I’m rounding up, there’s really too many grass blades to count, wheat plants to tally, just see the whole field swaying from here to that shy blue mountain. Swaying as in rocking, but also the other definition of the verb: we sway, we influence, we impress. Unless we’re asleep, the field’s asleep, more a postcard than a real field, portrait of the people unmoved. You know that shooting last week? I will admit the number dead was too low to startle me if you admit you felt the same, and the person standing by you agrees, and the person beside that person. It has to be double digits, don’t you think? To really shake up your afternoon? I’m troubled by how untroubled I felt, my mind’s humdrum regarding the total coffins, five if you care to know, five still even if you don’t. I’m angry I’m getting used to it, the daily gunned down, pop-pop on Wednesday, Thursday’s spent casings pinging on the sidewalk. It all sounds so industrial, there’s nothing metal that won’t make a noise, I’m thinking every gun should come with a microphone, each street with loudspeakers to broadcast their banging. We would never sleep, the field always awake, acres of swaying up to that shy blue mountain, no wonder why it cowers on the horizon, I mean look at us, look with the mountain’s eyes we the people putting holes in the people.

Sidewalks of webs and weeds Run parallel to empy lots where foul deeds By handkerchief heads and winos were played, To that old house where we stayed. Irma Jean, Cora Jean and I, three debs, Against the cracks of weeds and webs. Sitting through matinees, dodging chores, Chewing gum; claiming boys were bores. But secretly grooming hair and breasts; Jennie’s brood, a female nest. Irma, long-legged, delicious full lips, Taught Cora and me to wiggle our hips. George Darlington Love, a beau, my first; They yelled his name like a tribal curse As his virginal fingers pressed our bell. Against that background of sights and smells, We ignored switchblades, zip guns, and knees Shattered by cops in that place without trees. Now memories of dances are sprinkled like seeds Among cousins and sidewalks of webs and weeds.

what remained: barren stalks bowing heads by the field-full. rusty air conditioners dripping from warped windowsills. rock formations retaining roots. hollowed out caves and dog stumps forced ragged, toothy grins. all ablaze. a laser show shot hot through the tinny night. every husk wore a well lit protrusion. every breath an asthmatic thrush more material than the silence that surrounds each carcass now: voided prayer: cold arthritic grating: remembering notions of breath. saints: offer a hand to a wheezing shadow: wish for someone to hold before the sure, sudden twilight.