Poems of personal protest
One
He fights the 6-day war
over and over again in his head,
seventeen in `67,
the concussion bombs still
echoing in his ears,
propaganda slogans,
his mother groaning out
from under the rubble
as if giving birth,
never a name to the bomb
that struck or a side to blame
the years, however, labeling
it "Jew" without evidence
the homeland issue curling up
each night in the bed with him,
a lover from whom he finds
no satisfaction, just the
constant wanting of justice,
married to the prearranged wife
he never chose after two full
years American,
after twenty years of his mother's
eyes screaming hate!
Two
July 13, 1990
We are trapped in a pattern of traffic,
of trucks that shake the walls
and planes the air
The hazy weather locking their sound
in close as I sit upon the step
waiting for you.
They are the bars of our prison
the clinking of civilization
around us with no key out.
Even with eyes closed, they rattle
their chains, calling us to our prison
master's gaze when we think too freely
Three
He sat counting
child-support payment stubs
Eighteen years of back
stabbing pain,
mementos of ill-use,
tickets of poverty,
remembrances of pennies
pressed from his empty pocket
paying for a stranger's child,
and a shiftless, shirtless,
shady ex-wife, changing
homes and lovers with her underwear,
the madonna and her babe,
lost between Nazareth and Bethlehem
with only this thin paper chain
keeping them connected,
from which me might construct his cross,
and hang himself upon it.
four
The dessert's not a place for children,
the man said, at the last gas station for sixty miles,
watching us parade up,
knapsacks and bedrolls and hair to our knees,
the open dessert stretching out
on either side like a ruffled wool blanket,
stained with puffs of green, hiding coyotes and sometimes wolves,
our eyes so big we could have swallowed it all,
as if we had any more choice at crossing it
than Moses did the Red Sea,
the man shouting questions after us
as to whom he should notify
when we didn't come back...
Five
It wasn't Washington,
but Johnson, who slept here,
a civil war of conscience
battling inside his head
to chants at his window
about children he's killed
my uncle, brother, sister's husband
flying home in body bags,
the lying man thinking
he might sleep better
with claymore mines--
or the endless voice
of echoing mortars
Dying before the end of it,
as if he knew it would never end,
the stumped, broken limbs
cluttering the white house lawn
twenty years later
the 1970 photograph
showing him with
long hair and swollen eyes
his great society buried
in Arlington like a hero,
his New York City bed preserved,
and bronzed like a baby's shoe.
Six
These days, his face is broken,
a chunk of china with missing teeth and calloused hands,
sergeant screaming inside his head,
twenty years after Nam, Tet and Tao,
set in a jagged ying-yang tarnished with agent orange,
driving drunk dirt roads in Jersey
where the cops won't stop him
and he won't be mistaken for a hero.
Seven
It was a tan Summer
of sand dunes and uniforms
of sweating men
with dreams packed in
duffle bags,
orders waiting for
Vietnam, ten companies
of future dead
marching from Ft. Dix N.J.
rifles like tooth picks
askew on their arms,
Man's first step on the moon,
swimming the Chappaquiddick sea,
and me, the terrorized child
marching beside them
waiting for a chance
to grow.
Eight
I'm sick of lawn chairs and marigolds
and sweet patio parties on penthouse ledges,
As if the City was a place for such things,
And not the reality fourteen floors below,
the humbled bureaucrat working up the ladder
as if he leads any where near the top
The back bent Chaucers leaving their mark
in deeds and their restrictions,
writing poetry secretly among library stacks,
Staring up at the lawn chairs like a corpse,
even the envy drained from his face,
suit & tie middle class simplicity. That's life!
Fogged windows, crying children, broken homes,
the latch keys dangling from wayward necks,
not millstone or albatross but way of life,
A marigold, winking sunlight down from the heights,
a tiny king kong swiping at flies, and humble
faced beggars bearing the account books.
Nine
"The water stays warm for months,"
the Atlantic City beach bum said,
explaining how he could swim
stone-naked in the surf at night,
his clam shell parables
written in the sand on the seaward side of the boardwalk,
more significant than Trump's towering casino,
more frightening, too,
pale truths washing away
with the rising tide as the old man swims.
Ten
War lust licks our boots
sariabo mud thick with blood,
madcap world war two films
reeling out day after day in our heads,
not nazis this time or communists,
just us, marching to gunfire music
and starvation and rape—
the beast let loose in our chests.
I want to die a hero, my friend says,
I want to... and is dead.
Eleven
City hall stuffed with resolutions
like an old man's mattress,
money found in its rusted springs,
puffy-faced white-haired politicians
producing tid-bits of truth from its ruin,
voting yes on honesty
while stabbing each other in the back,
poor Paterson dying as they grow fat.
Twelve
Slave masters
haunt franchises
like wolves
Teeth bloodied
on teenage fools
pasturing
big eyes
flocking through the doors
looking for dreams
of equal opportunity
in poor pay checks
and bad blood.