Social commentaries

Ohdammit sez John I’m in trouble
so I sed why John?
John sez I got the bill for my insurance
and I haven’t got no money to pay it
cause I won’t get paid for swoking and bailing
Keith Guymon’s hay till next week
I done told him that would be just fine
when he ast a week ago but
LaVerne she went and opened the damn envelope
on a chain letter and I aint got no time
to write out twenty copies
I got to get that hay finished
so what am I posta do now?

The bad mother wakes from dreams
of imperfection trying to be perfection.
All night she’s engineered a train
too heavy with supplies
to the interior. She fails.
The child she loves
has taken on bad habits, cigarettes
maybe even drugs. She
recognizes lies. You don’t
fool me, she wants to say,
the bad mother, ready to play
and win.
This lamb who’s gone –
this infant she is
pinioned to – does not listen,
she drives with all her magic down a
different route to darkness where

1.

Snow clouds shadow the bay, on the ice the odd fallen gull.
I try to keep my friend from dying by remembering
his childhood of praise to God, who needs us all. Würzburg:
the grownups are inside saying prayers for the dead,
the children are sent out to play — their laughter
more sacred than prayer. After dark his father
blesses and kisses him Güttenacht. He wakes
to go to school with children who stayed behind
and were murdered before promotion.

Seeing my friend’s son in his broad-brimmed hat
and suspenders, I think of the Quakers
who lectured us on nonviolent social action
every week when I was a child. In the classrooms
we listened to those who would not take up arms,
who objected, who had accepted alternative
service in distant work camps and showed
slides of hospitals they helped to build.
On Wednesdays, in Meeting for Worship,
when someone rose to speak,
all the energy in the room
flew inside her mouth, empowering her to tell

West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false
escape, South steam in milk.

North the great cat, East the great water, South the great
fire, West the great arrow.

East the uneager fingers, South the damp cave, West the
chained ankle, North the rehearsed cry.

As if the flow of the waters
From the triple streams of heavenly showers
So the sacred Ao of the eighth heavens
Whose flames have scorched the land.

Chorus:
Should our hearts’ love be restored
And our rights be ours once more
Then will our sacred beloved shoals of Kane
Be the firm foundation of the land.

That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound

Rebounding,
rounding the fecund earth

Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
is a mighty absence to understand

(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)

Dun is the color of submission

Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface —

Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple —

... some days ago I saw the picture of an Angel who, in making the Annunciation, seemed to be trying to chase Mary out of her room with movements showing the sort of attack one might make on some hated enemy; and Mary, as if desperate, seemed to be trying to throw herself out of the window. Do not fall into errors like these.

— Leonardo da Vinci
It is time to speak of the lies
of images, omissions, insertions —

imitations of reality,

but whose reality, Leonardo?

For you she’s in nature —

November 22, 1963

First, a black mark in the sky,
a speck that grows

into a plane widening,
dramatically circling
before it touches
a gray strip of land
designed for its landing.

Then the players descend
the wheeled stair

to the stage
for the cameras,
our collective eye:

first her, then him,
as is custom,
and their entourage
trailing behind,

those who believe
the world is young
and the future spreads
out like geography.

The General’s men sit at the door. Her eyes
Are fat with belladonna. She’s naked
Except for the small painted turtles
That are drinking a flammable cloud
Of rum and milk from her navel.

The ships out in the harbor
Are loosely allied
Like casks floating in bilge.
The occasional light on a ship
Winks. In the empty room of the manuscript
Someone is grooming you
For the long entrance into the dark city.