Deaf and unpublished

Written before I realized that I was being lied to about what Lennon and his Green Party gang had done this piece of post-60s moxy testifies to the Royal brainwash as well as my dedication to the art of poetry.

Mac Crary

I won the Pennsylvania Governor's School Scholarship for Poetry in 1978 as a high school student and once placed second in a Seattle Poetry Slam. My home was in Chinatown. This was rushed after a cardio ER ordeal orchestrated by the gobblers.

I hope you enjoy this poetry book. I have been working on it all of my life.

Hypotenuse

poetry by Mac Crary

dedicated to Jeannie

The Firefly Song

I have a firefly named iron hammer.

Cross the border

to the house next door

prying eyes

have seen this before

atheist thing

we tried to drown in the lake

gives company to the snake.

Lights out! On Memory Lane.

Tears fallen,

as rosy early waters of years

comes cheap.

A man of malevolent moods

with a woman disheveled;

in the song of the devil.

Bury me

in Osaka.

Made for the pleasure of man

in a keepsake box

on the streets of shame

there's been a firefly

since time began.

I have a firefly

named iron hammer.

From the soap of a city

because I didn't get there in time

she sends me a sign

that sets my soul to shine.

I am a firefly

about to die.

Bury me in Osaka.

In the West

we sometimes say,

"Sayonara".

The Fire Painting of Antiquity

In the common tongue

it works as follows:

We go to the Post Office

to pay Caesar's piper

and then to the gallows

for having thoughts of our own;

it works as for what is a certain

nostalgia these days about The Dark Ages.

Mephistopheles told an old porn star

who was inquiring about his retirement plans

that souls are worthless, and Faust is passe.

I'd rather pick out used Pontiacs and Fords

he snickered.

Nettles, pismires, Hieronymus Bosch.

Wash your hands of Hades.

No one escapes being purified by fire.

Let us talk casually of black plague

like two men seated on the bench at the station.

Hell is an old money ploy.

It exists so you'll wear a cardboard sign

when you go mad.

Hush, said my Christian friend,

Mephistopheles can hear you.You aren't a fool.

You know you will burn for your ways.

I said, I empathize with them.The things being done to those girls

in those films are the sort of things

that were done to me.

No, he said, shaking his head sadly,

you are not fast you are foolish.

Yet I protested still,

flames hot enough to melt diamonds

bring flowers to our world everyday.

Rot if you must.

Sit like a nun sealed in glass.

Be human vultures.

Embark on the grisly task

of cutting out a man's heart

to appease the Gods

in front of a constituency

jonesing to see someone die.

Sang the tiny twins of Mothra

there is a balm in Gilead

and we shall overcome.

If fire consumes the flesh

until pain itself becomes vapor

how then do we come to speak of hell eternal

and how far removed is water really from fire?

As I asked he sat shock still.All around I felt Lucifer's wings beating.

The crowd on the trains fell to pushing and shoving.

We lunged, gasping for oxygen

in the sulphuric, blackened

strophe, antistrophe and catastrophe.

But this conduction was mere illusion.

We remained there stock still.

Nothing had changed.

No one else had noticed.

God, I rushed to say,

seeming abridged but suddenly sure,

does not want worship, but only a chance to explain.

I think of Saturn, halo'd for beauty,

the moon artfully aligned to earth

like the strings of Brooklyn Bridge.

The light of Rembrant was said by Dali

to burn dim because its fire is eternal

and we speak positively of Kennedy's eternal flame.

Sang the tiny twins of Mothra

there is a balm in Gilead

and we shall overcome.

Nothing, said Mr. Horrible Mephistopheles,

makes any difference.You will be instructed to keep

the hands of your conscience

politely folded.

Multitudes cascade into cemeteries

like cattle droppings.

Sweetly he said it.

Think nothing of mass graves.

Nazis are allowed in the schools

from which thou art banned.

Think of the times, he hiss-whispered

in that inscrutable hiss whisper

by which he is known to all.

Ethics, you will soon be told,

is nothing but the language domain

of the dominant ethnicity.

Silence, he said,

is saught and coveted everywhere

because you have polluted the world

with your dreams

ye the prime movers

of this godforsaken place you think heaven.

My Christian friend looked up at me

with fire in his eyes and said

your hand beats me.

All I know is that I am afraid.

The Death of a Transient

After dinner at the smokeshop

the stress and cold were just enough dementia

to make thin blood romantic

as a pale brush of light varnished the shadows

thick and gooey

with the paste of another dreary day's corruption.

The old man

with movements like a lobster

knew the hobo he'd come looking for with blankets.

He peered into the shaft of ice pitch dark

shaking his head free of Dickens ruminations

he peaked into the birdshit underpass

and demanded, "Quang! Quang!

are you asleep in there?"

...and will you lie together?

wrapped tonite in

my friend I love you

that arm that rest forever

will you ever

corner of

rest your head...

The rustling of old drug varmintcy

shifted his footing side to side

was it silence or a painful throbbing

he was listening to, sharp as ice picks,

the gummy white tooth of hell

at the entrance to death by suicide

came flapping out like a pigeon

newspaper bat flapping in his face

litter palace of rats.

"Quang! Quang! Are you asleep in there?"

...and will you lie together?

wrapped tonite in my

friend, will you, I love you

that arm that rest forever

will you ever

corner of rest your head?

Here were the lost causes of

sodapop jerks turned rumrunners

who didn't finish high school,

or realize you didn't learn to read,

you didn't fight a war

you aren't entitled to a graveyard communist plot

much less an American safety net.

Drunk dementia no more creative

than vampires, bugs and UFO's.

Perceptions of ghastly oil.

The material questions of yellowing yellow.

Wallet photos gummed together with hospital tape

bald head pinched with fright

desperate now,

"Quang! Quang! Come out!

Are you asleep in there?"

Quang echoed down the tunnel

like the hollow narcissus

of men driven mad by acne and gospel.

The mandatory sweep of red lights.

Red from the police channel

Red from the porno dive.

Floating up like a fish eye

from the shark ravage'd deep

murder'd by rich thieves

from The Big Culture Museum.

Uh-oh, Cops!

Iraqi Song

When cormorants die,

humans dream.

The market polls rise, deceptively.

Someone scribbles a jest

on a Scripps-Howard shopping list:

"Pick up a new sea

to house and keep our submarines".

A beached whale, named Gandhi.

Frankenstein's Radiant Night

The winos in the mercy wing

hit their heads as they fell asleep

dreaming of the nuns in the bluebeard convent

who hushed them in their murmuring

on Frankenstein's radiant night.

In the darkness a single torch was lit

and suddenly it went out

as just as suddenly it was him

who espied them in his sight.

The faeries of the garden twisted with fright

singing, "Frankenstein, let your pure heart shine".

Police came dressed by Pierre Cardin

it was the bluest blue you have ever seen

and trembling they applauded the bellows of a mind so obscene

that it stank up the ballroom with gasoline

on Frankenstein's radiant night.

Al Gore came down the Alamo-Gordo

to see who'd been borking the ventrilo'rehnquist.

Lady Bird twittered, "It's a Southern hitch",

as they passed around Chelsea panting like a bitch

on Frankenstein's radiant night.

Now all who attended say they wasn't there

but the horseshoe keeps appearing above their door

that signifies attendance on the floor

of Frankenstein's radiant night.

Ode to a Poetry Slam Loser

I am just a slam kill, I am lame.

The poems of my rivals have put me to shame.

I've never gotten anywhere up on that stage.

You'd think I'd be more successful at my age.

I met a man named Able, he drove an oil rig

kept a girl in every state, but he swore he was no pig.

He said that love's for pleasure, then there's doing it for fun.

He piece was not his mistress he was married to his gun.

He swore he'd burned a dozen men and never shed a tear

that the only man worth killing is the man who shows his fear.

He drove that oil rig with such madness it's a shame.

I couldn't say I'm sorry though I guess that's not my game.

He said well what do you do Cane, I said that I write verse.

He shouted boys what have we here, some fag forgot his purse!

They took me to the moonshine, I saw immortal heights,

I'd walk down there among you but the noose is much too tight.

I saw the face of Shakespeare when they hanged me from that tree

Phyllis Wheatley, Dryden, Pope, John Donne

and then in my heart I saw the shimmering image

of the poet with a thousand names.

But alas, I am just a slam kill, my god I am so lame.

It's strange they call me Cane

the one I carry is no prop,

it gets me where I'm going

without it, I'm so lame I'd have to hop.

The Toy Shelf

There's a odd TV set

with antennae that's broken

no one wants the trouble

of tuning in.

There's a costume

of the man of steel

there's a feather crushed

beneath the wheel.

Knick knacks on the toy shelf.

Hey look, there's me.

Come with me, now, little kitty

whose name is Mori Ogai.

Come with me, now

Come with me now.

Come with me on my pedal copter

to see where Grandpa Mac was buried.

Come with me, now,

come with me, now,

come with me now.

Making rhymes from a list of words

Chinese chimes and a cuckoo bird.

I used to curl up in my corner

torn to shreds with hurt and fear

or at least I'd try.

But it seems it was too much to grant me

I guess that you thought I'd get away

with a flight of fancy.

Turning back the clock I've learned

is a place where I got burned.

I was too young to fight a war

but you chose to teach me hate

a darling child

who display case sits on a toy shelf.

How much did you spend today?

Is it the same as spending time?

How much power did you exercise?

Did you listen to me for an hour?

I tried to please you

like a guitar knocked out of tune

I let you tease me

until the roots of my soul went blue.

I'm freezing from the loveless land

where you made me take my stand

I was too dumb to let it go

I followed you and begged you

to show me how to play.

Just sit up there is all you'd say

a darling child

whose display case sits on a toy shelf.

A damaged child

whose laughter sits on a toy shelf.

The Deaf River

The word Vietnam fell on my forehead like water torture.

It's time I warned you.

There's reason our hearts have safety valves.

In a scent of fell cloves

a burning urine stuck in my stomach

making me throw up yellow rain.

The things that have been left unsaid and undone

because of Vietnam.

Some men see women in categories

of Italian, Latin, Negritude and shade;

others see them as mothers, sisters, spouses and colleagues,

but the combat veteran is a place all her own.

Vietnam, I'm burning, shivvering.

Vietnam, I'm choking.

You will remember that

during the evacuation of Saigon

a woman committed suicide with her Amerasian children

leaving a note to her father that read:

I had thought better of you.

For some of us, I guess I mean me,

the tragedy of our times is too dear

the sorrow and loneliness within will never go away.Even the thought of sharing the rights of agony

drives us to the brink of screaming.

For us the only answer

is plastic palms and sand bars

in a globe of crystal

a separate reality

surrounded by peace signs

that read: No Trespassing

and Keep the Hell Out.

Some of us keep an agonized

attack dog driven piteous from cruelty

with one eye pleading for a milkbone

while yapping and snarling

and certain to bite your goddam arm off.

I keep searching for hidden resources

against the voice saying burn, baby burn.

I've been squeezed out like caulk

to fill in gaps like dead letter ads.

I've seen the political years wasted by borish gnomes.

I feel like the rice paddy grandmother

become a raw spectral witch

her bonnet catching the sun rays of the ten thousand things

as they pushed her off the helicopter ramp

and she withered up in midair as she fell.

At the snap of a veteran's fingers you will wake up

and accept your place in hell.

Be it ever so humble.

One Summer when I was poor

someone gave me a strawberry.

I honored it like a tragedy.

Wept as I ate.

It had been so long.

It was like coming out of a coma.

Seeing Dan Rather for the first time in ten years.

I went out to the Tao Dan Cafe

where they try to look

stoic but young

against forces of growing centuries too soon.

Coming from churches and casinos

to watch old ballroom videos from France,

with growing impatience for the American Dream.

A poet crosses off a word from paper.

The broken mirror cuts off your head

as a chair turns you its way.

A poet crosses off a word from paper

and they being to tremble;

a shout arises from the card game

like tears in the forest after the rain.

And the word is no.

We both said it.

We both said it at different times,

we said it about different things,

but it meant the same:

that it hurts too much.

A Humble Child

You were a humble child

who saved all those romantic words

for an hour in between desperate years

when you seemed beautiful.

A gnarled tree

who brings forth flowers.

You seemed a cutthroat

desperado when

I stumbled across you

as Summer lined the streets with buses

anonymous, as much a stranger to yourself

as I to you.

One stranger to yourself to another,

you'll pass away with no fair chance

to say the words which tore our lives,

but I remember, you were a humble child.

Yasko

Yasko was ice.

Her dad was a drinking man.

She took to dancing in the heart of Choshu.

Met a nice German at the Viet Apache

just to live for a day and then find someone new.

She'll always be flotsam.

God gave me sake so I'd never lose Yasko.

Whatever happened to Yasko?

Oh, boy, does everybody love Yasko!

Dust and Honey

Love is a blizzardous dust storm.

The Tree of Honey serves the tea of dread.

Shouts collide in the dust storm.

It is no wonder woman is silent.

Bad breath of love.

I drew "I Ching" in the dust.

Beheld a fractured leaf

like faience glazed in dust and honey.

It had fallen hard and nearly shattered,

then cracked, it lifted and withdrew,

wafted like a porcelain balloon

in a gently drifting arc until

it caught on a corner of light

and abruptly made its final fall from grace.

Please don't put it aside.

There's no need to hide

when this sullen perfume

for protection and emergency

finds its way through.

It's an offbeat sour

not quite sickly nor dour

pungent sweat sweet.

Let's play honey, now.

It's like hide and go seek.

The Lord made this world

to be ruled by the meek.

Carry me through the dust.

Sip with me.

The artless tea

tense for a broken hour

frustrated hinge of desire cracks shut.

I'm trying to understand you

but it makes no difference what I do.

Your bereft glare

reminds me to beware

the sticky infidelity

this fig leaf of tea.

Before you send me away

show me the way.

Dust and honey.

Dust to dust.

If Junko Could See Me Now

If Junko could see me now

pouring over her gossamer book

put down her brush of Fuji bamboo

give me a sidelong glance and a smile reserved

for someone new

I'd curtsy before her upwardly mobile attache

of a monarche in waiting

like the haiku of a buddha and I bought it in a Goodwill Store.

Her friends could leave a seat vacant for me

her absolutely fine seamstress

with a grunt

exerting the overbearing measure of control

that you find among uneasy English

it's true I have seen a phantom

she gave me one wonderful Sunday

walking through the parking lots of Shadyside

like the saloon roads of a Jimmy Stewart western.

"Cowboy", she said, "this is your photo opportunity".

I couldn't hear her couldn't reach out to her

not feeling that way

still don't know why she took me off hold

some kind of caprice from the ennui of samurai

like cutting me loose from the woman of the dunes

Junko used her cell phone like a scimitar

to gust through the grass and confetti.

If Junko could see me now

I'm sorry to say she would lower her eyes

having never really wanted all the attention

scaring her off was surely not my intention.

If Junko could see me now.

"Until the day that we meet again, Bojangles"

my sleeves would be wet with tears.

Irises

Contemplating Hiroshige's woodblock of irises

in my room

as the Chinatown cherry blossoms begin blooming.

I picture the century of men before me

pleasantly inspired

for whom the blue tints of time

in Hiroshige's print

awoke the heart's hummingbird dance

for the laborious turning of the ground.

It is as if

by engraving them as painters

the human-ness of a flower

becomes real.

Through the woodblock

the little garden blossoms become wise men

much as the Buddha smiles from a living lilac.

Howdy Doo Like An Angel

It's too cruel to see how you have been used

close your eyes for it seems that way

you can see completely to forever

but no clue appears as to the author of your pain

no whisper of intuition

no sign no mark on the wall

when you open your eyes

numerous hands, numerous strangers

but nothing betrays the demon in your blood

howdy doo like an angel.

City spins around ya

bridges umbrella your head

the garrulous streets scrape your shoes into rags

your dreams into rubble

as paperdolls pad the pages of newspaper chairs

seats made of concrete and ashes

howdy doo like an angel.

The book of morality

came laden with firefights

your response time was fast

as the radar of bats

but a big piece of the moon

dropped out of the sky

and fell on you

all dead weight

free men are fools

for a luckless fate

howdy doo like an angel.

The Raft of the Medusa

(March 18, 1993)

Scores of working Christians and I am uncertain.

Judgement. Grudging ardors. Tempestuous silences.

Frustrated men in camoflague defend against treason. Defend!

It reminds me in melancholy of a childhood certainty.

There is a moral fire and there is a living hell.

With intent, outside the rustic New England sanctum

the living witch tattoos her thigh, hisses with derision

her crack black slacks

her boyfriend loves the Boomtown Rats.

School is on holiday, they kiss,

life replies with twins of lightning, ha!

So there is a God, a mythic Bonaparte.

The quintessential names are listed in a telephone directory

and in the alleyway Eve is burning on a pyre.

Complete the death certificate.

A JDL boy will administer the whipping. Form six.

What was the note she left behind?

Did they really find it on Old Father Thames

and did she drown?

Alfred Hitchcock slaps his armpit.

Would you be interested in speaking to the publisher?

Were her lovers interested in LSD?

Did she drink coffee at the Beehive?

Did she chase white gulls

and swing away towards the evening star,

and was she beautiful?

One Thursday we drank vermouth from a funnel

and listened to the Doors.

Und so man cher we hanged out.Concentrated on homework

a textbook printed at Temple

indefinitely made plans to study together again

tried not to steal away into ourselves

feeling desperately wrong.

But I was a part of it.

Carried water to her under the tree.

Talked like a Chinese talking dog of germ warfare

and wargs from goblinhog hell.

And the street lamps lit up effigies of the Feral Family

and that fat kid, a bong toking lawyer

took me out to play horseshoes

under the cold white light of a bad afternoon sun

the spikes were so erect we never missed a beat

it was mystical perfection a universe of sleaze

at that stage anyway the revolution sputtered

but then I remembered Shoah and excused myself please

I re-instated funding for my values

fixxed my tie

wrote to the President for Peace of All Living Things

in Otsu, Shiga-ken, Japan.

Whilst her mum wrote me a love letter to cheer me up

I scribbled a bacchus in the confession.Mordechai, the gift of memory, with drawings by Shawn McBride,

schizophrenic women saving earth from nuclear armeggedon

and pure Americans riding the river of abortion's blood

to a holy war on lesser men

straddle the gay cadavers in plastic body bags

and my voice snarls, "Nuremberg".

Whatever happened to Buckminster Fuller.

Dreamer, naive idealist, a chorale of local misers sneer.

Abolish prejudice.

Scribbles and cheers can heal heartbreak.Plagarize nothing, but with a chainsaw.

No jokes and no mistakes around here

crooked exertions over fuzzy legal pitfalls

scramble out with letters and enclosures.

Over the rooftops, hookers are braying to the KKK.

You should be proud, oh titans of plenty,

pray for your conquerer with pragmatic faith.Let me sustain you.

Won't you plan, having written nothing?

Brilliant and climbing up to the avenue of the sun

a new world order where your voice is changed by darkness.

Why would we feel shattered, left vacant by the day

if pale thighs went still, fading into the wall?

Nadine

The spirit world is an occupied zone.

I'm an occupied spiritualist and I don't know why.

Down at the pinball joint huddled up in the corner

trying not to be seen; shirking off the coo

of local notoriety, brought low by the game.

Flashy as a six pound bass

with my broken teeth and Medusa doo

when the clowniac of electric jism

smashes through the peel red door with distain

and the oil'd drab of pay per view urgency

schlags with a velvet sheen.

Auch der lieber, it's Nadine.

She rides the world like a taxicab

ten times as fun as the party,

an outlaw to introduce to your in-laws,

half-tart, half-hag.

I know her from a class I took.

She got the dream of a palace in Madrid

dedicated to the restoration of the Marx-Engels Reader.

She's insurgent, but gullible

and tends to fall in with her own enemies,

but a little too much death about her make-up

to be mistook for Mate Hari.

When I approached, this may sound sick,

she said okay, but make it quick

and no more jokes about Christianizing China.

Auch der lieber, it's Nadine.

The spirit world is an occupied zone

our souls are like barrios

hammered half-shut as the deaf

our tired dialogues cry in rain-blackened streets.

You don't need to be an expert in body language

and facial expression to see the pain our people are in,

something has ruptured in our fabric

leaving a compound of disappointment and disgust.

The personas of our mothers are bloated and cracked

while empty doors of perception yell at us

where we once stood in our prime

our souls tacked up as vacancies

in our grafitti proud slum.

And the roadsigns are like Nebraska

with the crows half-dead sighing

the uncouth breath of doggerel switchboard

in the hotel of prisoner Jebb and Maria

at the dim sum bowl of their feud.

I'd walk away. I'd walk away.

On the pilgrimage of broken man.

My stumbling feet just put this burned out day in Absalom.

But auch der lieber, here she comes.

Microphone of Charlie

The trees are nail in Brooklyn

magnificent purple of coal

when all my colors go

at the old microphone of Charlie.

Well Noriko dreamed Key Largo

in a butterscotch Iowa bar

tagging along with Billie Holiday and Poe

the rats of Tang held kosher in bedlam

the charnelhouse was a bore.

Trees are nail in Brooklyn

magnificent purple of coal

when all my colors go

at the old microphone of Charlie.

Strange themes the circles of Dante

shied sickos to give us a thrill

their peashooters scheduled in Spanish

their hubbub down on the pill.

The trees are nail in Brooklyn

magnificent purple of coal

when all my colors go

at the old microphone of Charlie.

I Hurt My Leg, Dancing

(written after 9/11)

I hurt my leg, dancing

but you know how things are

we've all broken contact with empathy.

You go my way when things are smooth

when things get rough you're back on the move

I hurt my leg dancing.

I once knew a priest

who gave the church a good name

he never said sinner

he either said that's life or a crime.

You know the police just dig authority

the bigger the brass the more they kiss ass

nobody really gets paid to do their job

I hurt my leg, dancing.

Everybody's goin' out tomorrow

two Chinamen put kegs on the roof for the band

you think I meant beer?

The fuse set to blow.I hurt my leg dancing

so go, go, go, go.

It's better to be called a liar by a liar than to lie

but the world always looks greener from a red room.

These colors aren't coded they were meant for a brush

I hurt my leg dancing but I'm not in a rush.

No hurry for me, just run on ahead.

The cat'll cry, "Republic!" if this place goes up

until it does just dig the freak

he's the man to defuse the doublespeak.

Don't cry for me, sweetie, I know I'm dead.

I hurt my leg, dancing.

Nickel and Dime Renegades

Lincoln's trolley usher pushed the Black girl off.

Still she strolls and catcalls with her wickerbasket.

Still she strolls and catcalls,

singing with a penny on her arm.

Lady Chatterley's Negro, he's her Uncle Sam

Still she strolls and catcalls with her wickerbasket

Still she strolls and catcalls,

singing with a penny on her arm.

Who's my master? Who's my master?

Sang the Mina bird.

Who's my master? Who's my master?

Children danced, ask her! Ask her!

Still she strolls and catcalls with her wickerbasket

still she strolls and catcalls,

singing with a penny on her arm.

Names she recognizes

although she doesn't read

she sees them in the paper

although she doesn't read.

On the Absolution of War Criminals

(written for high school)

In scrapbooks of men you slaughtered

are urgent recollections of futile dramas of families

devoured by obedient machines.

The rain of ash, concrete cigarettes

and merchantry of death

evidence your felony

institutionalized by a lawless electorate.

And in Dresden, in basements, we cuddled,

our souls reduced to the mewwing of kittens.

While the blue sky pounded us.

While the white clouds pounded us.

While Churchill pounded us for Uther Pendragon,

while Wagner pounded us for Siegfried's ghost

tore open our sensitive flesh,

the masks on our faces we would have liked to call skin,

the reverberations of the bombs grew gently dimmer by distance

to become the lovely voice of Vera Lynn on BBC rah-dio.

In New York City, your family at leisure

played inspired games, the children played house.You were in Columbia, a major mountebank

of irrelevant academia,

you who loved best to read to your wife

voted Democrat that year.

And as waters drift across our mother earth

it came to pass upon the long irridescent changes of sunset

that day as I hustled home the alarms began again.

By the side of the road stood Venus with a cigar

as I made for the basement I thought of as home

where we laid down extra blankets

when the Nordens lost their home

and we shared the scavenged candles and the fear.

You never know what fear can do

not even when you think you've heard everything.

My mother smoked in the nude

each puff let out another fiasco of unconquerable anxieties.

I stood like a moth in the candlelight

and sagging my head I began to buzz.

Was I not born in Dresden?

I died when I was sixteen years old.

Addicted to Rhyme

Lost my job in a library

for kissing a girl from Milan, Italy.

I fudged my diploma and became a chef

because I got complaints about being deaf.

I used to run errands for a nuclear bore

who taught me a thing or two

about men of war.

Police took a look in my sorry head

asked the doctor, do you think he's committed a crime?

Doctor said, maybe not,

but he's suspiciously addicted to rhyme.

Was it Floyd Patterson who taught me to fight?

It don't make a damn if you're Black or you're white

a person is only as good as they soul

oh, don't pester me with sappy old rock 'n roll.

I know that religion is full of high times,

but I'm bound for hell

'cause I'm addicted to rhyme.

I used to type for a feminist troupe

got so I hated my alphabet soup

they were sweeter than smart

we made love all the time

but that ain't compare

to a half-decent rhyme.

I'm done smoking weed

I never shot up

but my life be broken

my life is shot up

I've thrown it away

on my addiction to rhyme.

Astronaut in a Paper Cup

Hungry imbeciles in concrete drag

needle up from the slopbucket dying.

The city's an inferno

hell's a tv

the rat republic

shysters defamed

madmen ride on camelback

in a sweltering bled

meld scripture, imprimatur insignia

though I am a humpback descendant of Cain.

Skull cracks black upon the highway

red core pops out just like a pimento

green olive brain

black olive covers me with a sheet

spiders beetles and prunes

transformed into hideous nectarine

sabine magi, simian spice

another twist of logos

and it scurries out from under your breadbox.

If the business of a man is his soul

then bring on the auctioneer

and don't be disheartened if you're bought and sold

and your smile is insincere

at least you're surviving and your head's screwed on

though you may feel a little uneasy

take this pill for your stomach pain

then sidle up to power

power leans back in his chair

sweat pouring everywhere

he's got a looking glass that can design

he's got glasses of gin

for his Mephistophelean contractors.

And who drives up in a Cadillac?

Goosestepping through the doorway

with his cracker jack,

he's got megabucks and snacks.

And who flies down in a whirlibird

with crates of rifles and the holy word

fighting for control of the herd.

He flies down on a laserbeam

to test upon the monkeys for his shaving cream

superfluous as Faust in a dream.

In a song about race riots and evil

neuro-anatomical needles

in a song about bad drugs and monkey

Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan

Chairman Mao buttfucking Charlie Chan,

everyone wants it just like before

you know I can't even get to sleep anymore.

Monk babies drunk baboons

broken fingers angry wombs

Old Yitzhak took a trip to Zaire

Old Yitzhak he's a rabid rabbi

What's this new beetle crawling out of my hair?

Ask Old Yitzhak he's the rabid rabbi.Oliver North said Jesus is here.

Edwin Meese added Jesus is fear.

His legions march before him

he leads them on in mindlessness

goosestep to goosestep

rank and file.

Tell them I cried, Muskie,

he said with a laugh,

heard all the way to Telluride.

Tell them I cried.

Bring me the head of the traitor, he cried

so they brought him John Lennon's head

and the new beetle and the new beatle

crawled out of his eye.

Bring me the fable of your Catholic Church

Walrus then, am I?

Bring me the feast of Jerusalem

Walrus then, am I?

Walrus? Walrus?

Walrus then, am I?

I was washing my hair

when the Secret Service came with their lie gun

Oliver Stone was blocking the streets for Yoko Reagan

Ming Na Wen was playing Rat Patrol

getting us to hit ourselves for Mother Jones.

I said, "Yer dirty Girt

and you'd better git in that hole!

I said Yer dirty Girt

and you'd better git in that HOLE!"

Monk baby, drunk baboon

broken finger angry womb

concrete overdrag.

Put me outta your head.I may be loud. I may be dead.

At least I'm out of womb 210.

O! Bellicose Sun

you go down when day is done.

Rise, and fall.

O! Bellicose Sun

axis of the wheel

Rise, and fall.

Red to orange to yellow

burning so bright

O! Bellicose Sun

now hidden by night.

Were My Words on Fire

Were my words on fire tonite

I would fetch water

so as not to explain.

A candle's rhythmic intensity

magnified by darkened reflections

caught in the movements

of people cheering an evening's ambiance

with lazy comments and tapioca.

Yes, a candle is enough fire for me right now.

Is it not true that books grow on trees?

I wish sometimes I could chew them

become nourished with meaning that way,

for I feel a need for knowledge in my body

of which I do not have to be held to aware.

Were my words on fire tonite

I would fetch water

so as not to explain.

Instead may I flute

like an amateur saxophone

through riffs as careless as tired children

lines pulling us back from limitless bounds

where wisdom surges

like the tempest of lovers in a crucible.

Were my words on fire tonite

I would fetch water

so as not to explain.

Old Wounds

If the sheen reflected in cab windows could speak

would it not be halting voices of broken partnership

stumbling blindly like the blues

to exhibit the custard of old wounds?

Pain is always considered to be the midwife of sentiment

but the mass is left critically deformed

hawking an evening's romantic longing

to find their voice in another's song of love stillborn.

Yes, Poetry is the most pitiless sweatshop of all.

The crucibles that leave their streaked mascara

among the brooding of the heaving and forgotten human race

are rummage bins where the cracked vanities of frustrated blush

leave scars behind as victorious armies

smear the prison society of our tears.

Each midlife crisis is a revolution

crushed like the hopes of children

in the hands of cynical teachers.

What made me believe?

Was it this song I heard like a heirloom lullaby?

What made me throw my fortune to unknown comrades?

What made me carry the weight of a fool's night stand?

I dream of an emphatic gesture

hurling a book across the room,

but what is the point of dramatizing old wounds?

The wound keeps ripping like a muslim prayer

housing in my stomach like a smite

twisting a sword into my quest for rest and meaning.I believe it stands a chance of ripping

my being off the coathanger of my existence

offering the only cloak available to the nakeness of death.

If only I could stretch the injury

into a garment to keep me warm

like the bourbon in a glass of ice

and pull it on like smoky lights

playing charades with the ghosts of Tramptown.

Ashes From the Sky

Ashes from the sky is that obscure enough for you?

The furthest corner of the world where things still go too fast

we really didn't know what to do

all we knew was never tell about the ashes from the sky.

Why weren't you there with the news?

Was it just too simple to have someone to accuse?

You weren't even breathing when I broke my vow

and asked you to explain the ashes from the sky

yes, I had given my word never to ask, never ask you to explain.

You said don't ask, don't tell.

But I said I knew they're burning people

and you said so turn to wood,

as hollow as your words.

I never saw a dead man smile such a glittering smile

as the one your wore as you said it again.

Ashes from the sky is that obscure enough for you?

Our nothing tears went up the chimney

so little Adolf could stage Revolution Number Nine.

You ask me about AIDS

I said your tears are ashes, too

is that obscure enough for you?

Diehard

In concrete oceans of tar

put down by coldiron hands

broken days have turned to broken years

for Shaky.

Shaky is a half-wit informant who plays the numbers

and has sold the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

since mercury dimes.

I said Shaky?

Aren't you sick of shouting at engines

from your newspaper stand?

I said Shaky?

Like a dharma bum

with your mafia broken hand

take your mind off that goddam sportspage.

Just who were the diehards, lemme ask ya

who put atomic power plants along the Allegheny

munching custard at old Forbes Field

with a wink towards Clemente and Maz

what with the kids loafin' down the block.

Shaky says he tried for years

to reach those kids

always stealing shit or something

and that sick one selling lids.

I'm gonna steal some shit tonite

said the wimp white boy to his pimp Black brother

which is gonna make things all right for my mother.

I'm gonna get some appliances from the house next door.

We're gonna eat noodle soup and peanut butter tomorrow

we're gonna get high and we're gonna cruise.

Sing hands

of the drug junta' Merica.

El Norte where the coca sales boom.

And the wires hold flesh and blood effigies

to the souls being picked off from the loom.

Casualty

Slept much too late

to make a good impression

even though they all could see

that was your intention

a man without control

has put the world on hold.

Me? I'm a casualty.

The rock is soft that is my face

it's still a rock it has no place

see? that's reality

the clouds are flying.

You locked my eyes

like locking horns

a web of steel that's tangled

and torn down

there was something in the overtones

of the words we just exchanged

that wraps around my psyche

like a snake around a glass

and it's getting much too late for me

to make you understand

that kind of ambiguity

is written in cold blood.

Where does that go

that hears the sound of many harms before

in innocent lies.

The unknown soldier wrote her name

in runes of cloud that none can read

but me, I'm a casualty

who wears the badge of rage in stocks and bonds.

Catch 22 Man

(on John Kerry)

There's a man from Massachusetts come

his soapbox worth a mint;

he says he's qualified to rule

because he did his stint.

He started Vets Against the War

and says they did their part

but he's the only one of them I know

who kept his Purple Heart.

Everytime I hope that he might show

some sign of his contrition

he goes poppin' off how good he was

at passin' ammunition.

He's the Catch 22 Man.

He wants to be Uncle Sam.

From the glory days they did unto King

what they did unto Vietnam.

He can spell a name like Le Doc Thu

or My Lai with a grin,

but believes religiously

that the war was not quite sin.

I guess it doesn't matter much

if what we did was wrong

those old women in the rice paddies

looked so much like Viet Cong.

I'll tune again tomorrow

for some sign of his ambition,

but I'm sure it's doublespeak

and they're cloaking his real mission.

It will be far advanced

before ya'all start bitching.

It's Senator Hawk calling

not be confused with Private Dove

and the choice that we were given

was between Bush and Mr. Shove.

The Party

I have often wondered about

the taboo against moral uplift

how wrong it feels to

speak of goodness and beauty.

The unwritten code of fashion

seems to court nihilism

far and wide

the machismo of hardened skepticism.

It is a Herculean effort

to speak of a flower.

To what end do we kiss

or spit upon the blank page?

Is it to twist our fabric

or lay bear the soul?

It seems to me that some questions

exist to belabor their answers

for what is there to question

about being asked to recognize

what is good and to live rightly?

Is asking why really so praiseworthy?

The rebel and the rogue

know their sullen anti-causes

and tear their clothes to make

new the tatters of disguise.

In the catty movements of their femme fatales

is all the vigor and vitality of

renegade assurance.

To live without meaning

takes strength and such strength

taunts you with its defiance.

Closing the door of perception

on the unwelcome

is a test of power.

Newly elected to the status quo

by junior year

everyone must seize the day

and determine their place

in the practice of this power.How to backbite

without being caught as a backbite

takes a skill, an art

and a sense of being special.

Aloof, one is accepted

to The Party.

The Party.

The Party is a grinning throng

empires falling

take up with

electric vampires

dreadnaught of the

hip hop syndrome

air planes, blue angels

dash in the heaven

amidst bullhorns

locked in foreign genocide.

The Party lives and

drives, its condominiums

and stashed away insurance

claims

warehouse

the stockbroker's

death squad on

poverty row

the burned out cops

the hillbilly druggists

from Mississippi

to Yonkers

The Party has them all

in the war chest

of New York celebrity,

gays and gay-bashers

welcome

to the dream with

two tongues.

decadence.

The Party.

The Plank

There is a plank.

It is white. It is several feet long

and as wide as a plank should be.

It is a plank for walking.

The plank is adjusted by the crew

by turning the crank

which extends it out over the water

or by turning the other crank

which makes it more flexible

just in case one wants

to bob up and down.

It is also a plank

for bobbing up and down.

You'll admit, I suspect

that a plank is nothing without a ship.

And there's a ship.

The ship, mate, has holes.

These holes do not make it sink.Instead, because of the holes

the crew can sit in their bunks

and watch the water.

The water, like the plank,

bobs up and down.

Pretty much all the time.

The sea is full of planks.

Now how did they get there?

Well, that's a story.

Once there was a ship full of dead men.

It sank into the drink

with a sort of sipping motion.

Down, down, gulb.

But there was one thing that didn't go down.That was the plank.

It floated to the top.

And this happened again and again,

over and over,

ad infinitum,

ad nauseum,

so now there's all those planks.

All those things that should have gone down with the ship.

Annabel Lee

Edgar Allen Poe

awoke startled from the crypt,

caked with mold and algae,

rotted pus of decay,

and declared, ah ha, I have it.

He rose from his tomb

macabre from head to rat nibbled foot

and dragged his limbs to Philadelphia.I must re-write Annabel Lee, he declared,

but first I must get the original from my museum.

The years in slumber had made him soft in memory.

Searching the telephone book

he found descendants of his publisher.

He dialed and his smoky, cold voice

announced his intention.

Meet me at once he declared.

The cry that went up

from the phone was a cry to wake the dead.

You can't Edgar! Annabel Lee is the most perfect of poems!

The publisher coveted its beauty more than its market.

He immediately hung up the phone

called scholars of Egypt at Temple,

men of all the arts,

a most remarkable chain of people locked their arms

as grim as mummies

at the entrance to his museum.He appeared in purple and green

at the darkest end of the the Philadelphia street

and slowly he walked determinedly towards them,

they shrank in horror at his ghastly countenance

but stood their ground.

Communists! He shrieked. Things of evil!

You can't Edgar!

Annabel Lee is the most perfect of poems.

His publisher stood with chattering teeth

and it seemed in his irrational demand

that Edgar grew twice his stature as a corpse

corpulent and huge.

The publisher quaking and bellowing could take no more

he drew out his skeleton key and turned towards the museum door

when with the fairest most radiant touch announced an unexpected agency

and looking up he stared

into the most beautiful face he had ever seen.

Annabel! said Edgar, his voice thin and mellow with supplication.

Edgar, she said...come back to bed.

Knowing it was wrong, you loved

laughed at the grief it caused

danced to the thrill of the wind

camped in the sweet desert.

Knowing it was wrong, you loved

drank of the milk of music

poured from a decanter called Faith.

You have shouted in the night

from our bed

as a lighthouse

searches open water

and wept at the bones

of your dead Leviathan.

Periodically, the Buddha

Another story of suicide and samurai

set against the wind and rain

of Buddha

mighty Buddha

in the season of magazines.

We speak of gratitude

for the new Emporer

and the schoolbooks revise

sad empire tellings

blame America in whispers for the war.

The feminists in Hamburg

sporting darling little Hitler coiffures

tell another story of suicide and samurai

set against the wind and rain

of Buddha

mighty Buddha

in the season of magazines.

In baseball paradise

as the sake Enka drumbeats glide

the bullet train

sweeps by the sacred mountain.

A Christian boy swears

he heard voices mommy in a teacup

as televised Sumo glows

over a company game of Go.

Fatigue breezes through housewives

in cheap kimonos

as compliments make their rounds

but we never seem to tire

of another story of suicide and samurai

set against the wind and rain

of Buddha

mighty Buddha

in the season of magazines.

In tenements of boredom's tears

cars grind to a halt

and gangsters of the cinema

make their crudities on film for a buck

It all resolves in Chinatown

whose markets we despair

will sell again another story

of suicide and samurai

set against the wind and rain

of Buddha

mighty Buddha

in the season of magazines.

The Silla Princess

In the days of King Uijong

the court disfavored martial ways.

When the generals spoke of battlefields

he lit their beards on fire.

Uijong could not comprehend

why anyone would want to do another harm,

and to study such ways as war

seemed affront to the ancestors.

In this age there was a Silla princess

beloved of the builder of the water well.

He walked her through the peaceful people

and sang to her unguarded

won't you marry me, Silla princess

while I am young and strong for public ways?

To carry forth the lamplight of Confucius

and build a broad community.

At last the army could take no more

they rose and slaughter King Uijong

and his courtyard to a man.

Among them died the builder of the water well.

In the trouble of the days that followed

a soldier came to her, declaring

that he would take her over any other

to which she scorned

how could you kill your brothers?

He puffed his chest and made this proud assertion

that those who died were guilty of desertion,

because she laughed at all his bluster

and had somehow lost some of her luster

he killed her with his sword.

And the voice that often tarried

across the valley carried

like wind in flowers once more time

a blind emotion that finds its way

the voice of the water well builder

won't you marry me, Silla princess

while I am young and strong for public ways?

To carry forth the lamplight of Confucius

and build a broad community.

Who's That Boy At The Piano?

All the soul worn war torn old boys love Casablanca.

But to spell it out for ya,

Bergman didn't really say, Play it Again, Sam.

What's more, if you want to talk about old time's sake

maybe you should refrain from going back a dozen frames,

because when she ever so romantically glides into Rick's Cafe

she nods to her chaperone and far less famously utters

who's that boy at the piano?

Let me tell you about that kind of boy.

That kind of boy flew with the Tuskegee airmen

was decorated at Normandy

brought on the surrender of Rome,

was denied a place in the triumphal parade

treated the whores honorably

got lynched back home for his pain.Wasn't given a seat on the bus.

Saw his most beloved leaders shot down.

Lived in psyche shattering terror

of white people and all their craze.Was lied to through the teeth

by lawyers and artists

who thought it was cool.

Let me tell you about that kind of boy.

That kind of boy

working for nothing

managed to raise a family

and sent them to schools

that he was never allowed to attend.

Was beaten half to death on the job

for looking at a white man wrong.

He used a cork bat by mistake

and never lived it down.

So let's re-dub the re-runs

who's that man at the piano?

A Heroine of Yesteryear

The year or so I was born a girl died

who through her long career

made the world less unbearable for everyone.

She faught race barriers

when such a fight was unthinkable

and her family, at least half of them,

to this day is still ashamed of her.

What do you know about the struggle for rights

of working Chinese women?

She was the lethargic China doll

with drooping cigarette

on the Shang-hai train

with true grit/maddog Dietriche;

a dragonlady of L.A. flophouse fame

poster girl from Madrid to Paris

a winged lioness who flew

from the court of Chang Kai Shek

to the green card klan of Charlie Chan.

Hollywood built a great wall of China

while the world was raining galoshes of war

and kept her out.

She had friends.

She met Paul Robeson in London

and must have poured him a glass of wine

saying I can't imagine the pain that you're in

but it must be something like mine.

She was color-barred out of her rightful place

as a mainstream movie star

called a symptom as often as a symbol

by those of her own ashamed of the roles

she had to grab

with the smile of a fortune cookie.

You know what the big word that went around is:

Opprobrium

and the consequence:

a bottomless glass of gin from the hand of Mephistopheles.

She faced all the bravura,

mayhem and machismo

with a dry, philosophical grace.

But some still said there was something wrong

with Anna May Wong.

Martian Song

I call upon the muse

get hold of my dream

things here aren't what they seem

a martian's been here

he said take me to your leader

I said you gotta be kidding me.

And I set forth to walk that night

like Fantastic Johnny C

to show that martian how to boogaloo.

I asked him martian

is North Korea the axis of evil?

He said not unless you make it one.

I said Martian Luther King

show us how to change.

He said you got me wrong, kid.

I'm just here for fun and games.

And I proceeded to walk that night

like Fantastic Johnny C

show him how earthlings learned to boogaloo.

But that dang martian be just like his old man

I spect I spose I see antennae

sticking straightforth from up on outta your head.

So I invite you to walk with me this night

just like Fantastic Johnny C

to show this world that martians too can boogaloo.

The New Bishop

(for Benjamin Linder)

Man'yoshu.

I live in the town with the pigs

and the church.

What is the name of my town?

This is the thing I've forgotten.Everyone here has forgotten the name of the town.

In this sense you could call ours The Town of Forgetting.

It wasn't always so quiet.

It used to be festive.

Our women and boys would make hundreds of...

coffins

for our men.

Our men were always so handsome

there in their coffins.

Our Bishop was the Bishop of Remembrance

how he stirred the fires of justice in our loins.The Bishop of Remembrance

blessed our schools

and our industries

he gave us blankets to wear

against the chilly nights

he gave charms to amuse the little girls.

And when the soldiers came on Sunday

and gunned him down

we tried hard to remember his name.

But he was followed in his work

by the Bishop of Forgetting

who spoke to us in riddles

and told us our souls

were not a thing to protect

but a thing to be gained

in service to the lord of love of riches

in homage to the bankers who live in guarded mansions

in fidelity to the glamor that appeared on his tv.

When asked of our children's naken feet

he spoke to us in parables

saying how much better to feel

the beneficial effluvium of the earth?

He told us not to cry that we were without schools

and what is ever hope but a false adherence to things

when the way to the Kingdom of God

is which way, Man'yoshu?

Is it over there?

Ask our matrons!

Is it down there?

I think that's the churchyard, Man'yoshu.

Which way is the Kingdom?

Which kingdom do you mean?

Is it down there?

That road leads to the pigsty.

The New Bishop

even has said

that the Kingdom of Flies

is the world regained.

Chess With Delgado

Z.bigknew.Z.bigdidnotknow.

Zbigknew.Z.bigdidnotknow.

IsaythatIdosay. IsaythatIdon'tsay.

IsaythatIdosay. IsaythatIsay.

There is no such thing as truth.

What is reality?

Open the door of perception with a scapel

close it with sutures.

Illusion no meaning

it's all in your mind.

It's the purest of fig leaves

on the shingles of eves

and a marion doctor

when rhyme and reason leaves

there's no lucky lotto

there's no will of the motto

to protect you

playing chess with Delgado.

Johnny Rotten was incorrect.

He once stopped a bull

with a spark to its brain

drilled a small hole

plunked it right down the drain

when it charged him to gore

went from snorting to snore

as soft as a kitten at the push of a button:

There is such a thing as a proper attitude.

Jose Delgado brain surgery master

found South America just a little bit faster

in a world more orderly sanitized less rude

lobotomized citizens are satisfied, satisfied.

Take the dixie cup from out of the dispenser

and place it back into the top

continue until you run out of cups.

It's the purest of fig leaves

on the shingles of eves

and a marion doctor

when rhyme and reason leaves

there's no lucky lotto

no will from a motto

to protect you

playing chess with Delgado.

I'mnotsayingIdosayamI?

Someone has stolen my mind.

The Five Misguided Spots

The couple of suburban creation

Adam and Eve of the salary quo

stood on the first misguided spot

down stage left and stage right

to the church pew of penultimate holy execution,

the moment they had been waiting for

since captured on TV together at high school basketball games.

Then on the second misguided spot

he stood alone in fanfare

up in the Uncle Sam peanut heaven

bigger than Jehovah

with the ticker tape of shopping receipts

for proof as a patriot unquestioned

always on the lookout

for brethren of the same pay scale.

And on the third misguided spot

a book by Chomsky temporarily

called into question the ideological consistency

of the parking meter.

While on the fourth misguided spot

his senses were bewildered and his voice began to change

as he saw just out of reach a startling new revelation

that eluded him until now

as his wife sat at his elbow

with a hankerchief embroidered with a snail

praying to Dan Quayle

perceiving the distended belly of mankind

as she cried cryitous, cryingly.

But on the fifth misguided spot

they arose to greet the new dawn

clasping hands on the turf

of their proud suburban home

and stood at the door on which the mailbox bore their name

in New York Gothic letters

the sun rose brilliantly on their unimpeachable nuclear family

while quaint old-fashioned bombers steaked across the sky

and the Catholics in the neighborhood went back to clipping coupons

for their name was the name: Impervious.

Dirge for Colin Powell

Vanish dreams in tears of war

in this world we laugh no more

by the purse of sleep we lay

no mortal coin but only clay.

By the Spring of Life my noble one

lay your head upon your gun.

Corner'd by the flower'd spring

like the coffins thouest brings.

My Lai Powell

he no lie

kiss and tell

spells kiss and die.

Raven's head but lion's mane

scorch the earth as one insane

blot the ears, blot the sun

blot the children on the run

build the sorrow, build the wall

herald of the final call

feed the fire combed with thorns

words of peace betrayed in scorn

courage grief by which you fly

all excuse to make sands cry.

My Lai Powell My Lai Powell

My Lai Powell

he no lie

kiss and tell

spells kiss and die.

Infantry

no arms

please leave your helmet

your jacket and your jawbone

at the door.

Dr. King

In deifying Dr. King

we have glossed over

both what kind of man he was

and that he was just a man.

In death, he has served celebrity

better than he has served the poor,

and on ejust hopes that someday

for all his hard work

he might eventually overcome

his personality cult

and his utility to Big Brother.

Everybody wants a piece of him.

His family who own him body and soul

The Republicans who say

that everything is up for grabs

the Democrats who argue back

ya gotta git as git can,

we the people by which they mean

the glamorous and famous.

The poor and afflicted

who want to hear of one single remaining

high court verdict

which does mean a new judicial mockery

of civil rights,

the religious folk

where Jesus sits more snugly among Blacks

than he ever could among whites.

But what is left for us, the poets

when all the music in his soul

has gone to waste?

The Gestapo

Those people who have no familiarity with Gestapo

have no trouble professing their surprise at what has taken place.

Such people go to great lengths maintaining that innocence is sacred.

There was, after all, no knock on their door at midnight.

It didn't surpise me when the Des Moines Register said

that Midwestern Americans regard their prosperity as proof

that they are morally favored.

Clearly voluntary poverty is the work of the devil.

The Gestapo move so as not to incur the notice

of those busy examining gas prices.

Something that you should already know:

It starts with just a few people,

most of whom remain very guiet,

all of whom cry

and some of whom plead very loudly for help.

These latter few, be advised, are the kind Gestapo try to avoid.

These few, usually quiet, people come to the attention

of a few prominent people who dismiss the whole thing saying

they must have done something wrong, to deserve it.

It takes a little while before whole reich trains of castiron thought

being rolling

while the credit card clicks another penny at the gas tank.

Gestapo are at once glamorous and droll

and they have such cunning, attractive women.

They know all the best people who are eager to assure you

that they are harmless and that you are their kind.

They will embrace you as brothers, take you to mountain scenes

as voluptuous as though they were painted by Parrish,

treat you with Confucian parables from men in the street

excite you with drums.

Their lies will be tasty as a Medieval feast

none of this bad beer of honesty

touches the lips of these polite hypocrits.

With students and women and armies behind them. Behold!

They can move mountains.

They are magical, mysterious and have powers

and phone numbers that you covet.

Be very careful to find some other way

than covering your hears when you hear screaming

to drown it out.

The preferred method is to whistle a recognizable tune,

one they have taught you, Let it Be.

But they will settle for silence and a face of Stone.

For sure, the old Gestapo were uncouth

hung traitors on meathooks.

Today's will cater to your taste.

You are, after all, their most desirable allies

in the war on the subhumans

and they are, after all, on your side

about keeping those gas prices down.

The first thing you will notice

is that they are fighting your battle for you

attacking things you always hated.

People you respect will refer to it as a wake up call.

You will be asked firmly to credit their methods,

speaking of banality,

you will wonder at your own misunderstanding,

for Gestapo are so fine and muscular

that those who oppose Him

appear the very paradigms of the weak and ineffectual

those liberals who are known to run home

when a woman teaches them the manner of their tongues.

Women have a right to be protected from such types

with the gentlemanly arts.

So in this great and raging day

deficit from Nowhereland

a fraudulent war

mysterious 911

may I have your attention, please?

The President has voted to strike down homosexual marriage.

That'll send our real friends a message:

That it's only a matter of time.

There's Something I Didn't Tell You

It began, it began

when Jesse Owens ran.

6 Deutsches Reich

on every stamp.

They men who eyed his car

wore an Iron Cross.

He ran and ran.

And Adolf jacked up

the flag higher and higher

high went the price of fish

as he jacked up the rhetoric

of the square jaw.

While Jesse Owens ran

he ran the race of man

to show them what it means

to be a man

is when it all began.

oh, suzanna, oh don't you cry for me-e-e.

In began

in a Hollywood bunker

on the edge of time

at the entrance to Hades

cloaking flapping in the black smoke

as he turned his gaze on a smouldering Germany

and climbed into a mystery OSS sedan.

oh, suzanna, oh don't you cry for me-e-e.

It began when Ahmed Isa ran

at the Tokyo Olympiad

for an actor's revenge

he won, then stumbled

then crumpled paraplegic

struck by a mystery,

is when it all began.

oh, suzanna, oh don't you cry for me-e-e.

And the cannibal girls sat at the table

and said Princess Grace

because Rudolf Hess' plane came down

in just the right place.

And it wasn't just Goering who cheated the hangman.

And it wasn't just the Emporer they allowed to stay.

oh, suzanna, oh don't you cry for me-e-e.

Hands Off My Zombie!

Lovey,

what are we going to do about that Siberia of the Harlem Politboro

Haiti?

If you let that ogre in you know what's gonna happen

if you let that ogre in you know what's gonna happen

He's gonna steal your zombie!

Hands off my zombie

I mean it

I mean it.

Hands off my zombie

I mean it

I mean it.

Hands off my zombie

I mean it

I mean it.

Hey, hey baby, what's the name of that love potion you gave me?

You do believe in Zombie?

In Port Au Prince

the lamplight shines on Black Athena

she's gonna be your black magic woman

and the land of Santerea

is going to be a star-spangled ghetto.

Death in the Invisible Empire

In Pittsburgh we called him The Great One.

He played right field for the Buccos.

A Puerto Rican so proud

that Dr. King befriended him.

He came from the barrios

and in victory would mingle with the fans

a mighty earthquake shook Nicaragua

and just before the plane went down

Roberto Clemente said, "amen".

We look at the emptiness where

for an immortal hour he stood

boarded up now like a vacant house.

Roberto, man.

My God that means he's dead, my father cried.

Hammer the face shut

that wears the smile of pride

surely that, above all, has been the American Way.

Chinatown Parade: Memorial Day

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Yeu Louie;

at the stern faces of the girls

marching in ceremonial form and costume;

at the children who cover their ears

for the 21 gun salute.

There are times when it is better to lose

life, but not living memory.

Look today, how we remember.

Please salute Yeu Louie.

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Lee Hong Chew;

at the flight of birds around

Hing Hay Pagoda.

Homeless men who come here everyday

now stand waiting for the speech to end;

for the mothers to take the kids home.

Look today as we stand aside an hour.

Please salute Lee Hong Chew.

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Bok Hong Chin.

Special thanks to Nisei Veterans

and Jade Guild.

The welcoming words

of Commander Phil Lew,

for World War Two

was unlike any other.

Please salute Bok Hong Chin,

man of the hour,

for the children he can't see

but from heaven.

What does it mean to be a man?

Today, that is what all the boys are asking

with their questioning eyes.

Why does the girl who looks so severe

hold a tissue?

I feel that I can hear

that lonely trumpet.

Look,

how beautiful the flowers are

for John Chinn,

gone so long ago.His family keeps a picture

smiling in his prime

going off to a war

from whcih so many men returned.

Please salute John Chinn.

The ribbons so carefully inscribed.

Today we need more than words.

We do not want any more wars.

We want to take pride

in that we do take pride

without demanding our sons

prove themselves in battle.

We remember they had no choice

and chose to answer Hitler

with the final words, "never".

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Bing Poy Wong.

For whom the aircraft circled in the sky

for whom Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams

dedicated their finest words

for whom the Bible was written;

who was given a heart to read ancient verses,

who was given loins

to father us children,

who was given back to God

by unfriendly fire,

who was rewarded

today by our misty eyes,

by our tears

by the firecracker sound

of 21 guns.

Please salute Bing Poy Wong.

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are today

for Henry Farren Goon

as the Senior Vice Commander

squares his shoulders.

We know the final hour

was a crime

as his mortal powers

brother, friend in need,

wentup in agony and smoke.

In Greece, they say "Z", he lives.

Please salute Henry Farren Goon,

even if uncaring cars roar by.

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Chris Y. Chen.Who knows what he wrote in his diary

or dreamed of under the apple tree?

Did he close his eyes and pray?

Did the doctor have hope?

Was it the endless pathetic cruelty

that we can't talk about?

Do you still see his smile,

damn K ration soup,

towwing his rifle, God knows where?

Please salute Chris Y. Chen.His memory valued among men.

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Lawrence Lew Kay.Hear what the Chaplain has to say

about what he'd dream if he was here today,

a man so much more than an inscription;

protecting us from night unending

he died alone in motherless night.

The Great Hand of Faith stopped all the world

and reached down to life up his spirit. With human pain he bid farewell;

with eternal faith, he embraced his fate.

Please salute Lawrence Lew Kay.

Look,

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Thick Yuen Look.

How much care went into every bouquet,

how attentive the drill team,

how stalwart the men,

how curious the children,

how defiant the girls,

how magnanimous the mothers,

how appreciative the boys,

how thoughtful the young men,

how carefully the old women take pictures.

How the mighty single trumpet blows.

Please salute Thick Yuen Look.

How do I come to spill these tears

reaching for my glasses as I sit on the ground?

My father did not die.

He gave birth not only to sons, but to students.

The fights he saw in Okinawa, Leyte Gulf

and Japan were huge,

yet when he spoke to me of pride

it was not in his medals,

but in his first pamphlet

on human rights.

Sure the flowers are sweeter

than my tears.

Look

at how beautiful the flowers are

for Lock Moon Kwong

Cathay Post 186

American Legion

Chinatown

and all his living classmates

think of him today:

It all comes back to them.

Please salute

Lock Moon Kwong.

Lock Moon Kwong

I'm sure it's true

we'd all be dead or slaves

were it not for you.

Mac Crary (James MacRyland Crary)