Power
So the thieves are back with their cynical smiles -
what they never earned they just take with a wink.
It's the same old arrogant game: What's good
for them is best. They wave the Bible to proclaim
the rules and praise the Lord who created fools
In the Fourth Year of the Emperor’s Glorious
adventure, we discovered the honey
bees were quietly deserting our orchards.
Then, almost as if they weren’t there,
young amputees began appearing
on the streets. Sullen exiles on crutches,
too proud to question, at a loss
to explain - the Emperor’s
broken toys. By the fourth
year the war was long won,
but we still couldn’t deal
with the spoils rotting in the sun.
While wasps and flies and soldier
boys buzzed like bright ideas
in the Emperor’s brainless skull.
There’s that Strange Recurring Dream:
The government of sneak thieve has finally
been overthrown by a revolution
of murderers. Our children
are in the streets, stalking their prey.
People are numb. They can’t
make simple choices, can’t decide
whether to go to work, drive
to the store. They cling
to their houses like trout behind
rocks in a winter river.
We watch the new leaders on television:
Master Sergeant Waldo, Monsignor Kelly,
the ascetic Police Captain Striker.
Each is wary of the others.
They agree on the points of order
without smiling. We realize
it doesn’t so much matter what’s forbidden.
It’s only important to know that all
penalties have now been reduced to death.
We lie here, naked, on the covers,
washed by the flickering silver light,
titillated by their static voices.
All non-procreative sex is now banned,
they agree, and our puckering
middle aged bodies are dazzled
by the forgotten excitement of mortal sin.
Humane
is a strange concept. A word we take visiting to some
very dark places. The CIA practices humane interrogation.
Lethal injection is humane – as were the electric chair
and the long drop, before. The Humane Society gasses our
unwanted pets. The ancients were being human as well
as humane when they sacrificed a pound or so of
ritually slaughtered beef to the nectar nourished gods,
hoping to entice heaven to share and absolve
carnivorous guilt. Our slaughterhouses with their
conveyers, pulleys and killing machines are inhumane
but efficient. As are cats who play for hours with their
prey, just to savor their own cruel saliva.
But are they inhuman as well? The really big, wild
cats, after all, don’t toy with their kill. Hunger
is too insistent. It’s the sleek, Purina fed housecat
that revels in torturing the starved trembling mouse,
the peeping crippled sparrow. And the ordinary
guy with a bit of a Budweiser gut who patiently
chomps a pizza on his gently rocking boat and nurses
his excitement - waiting for the nibble of a really big one,
the still ignorant pull on the barely visible line:
The kind of fish we all want, the kind that fights
futilely against the hook in its craw
and runs again and again from him,
full of hope, then ever so slowly,
losing hope. ever so slowly reeled
in by his brand new, slick equipment.
Joseph and Magda in the Bunker
Three generations past that other,
1945, May day. Listening to Shirer’s sad
audiobook in the muted park. Sunlight
almost embarrassed by its warmth. Two
pond geese, each standing on one leg
like question marks. What deity blessed
those bastards with such lovely children?
Joseph and Magda Goebbels, who chose
not to live without Hitler. But, first,
poisoned their Helga, Hedwig, Heidrun,
Holdine, Hildegard and Helmut.
Helga, the eldest, may have suspected;
distinct bruising was noted around her
mouth. Were the others already asleep
from the pinch of their morphine injections?
All six, ages two to twelve, laid out in pajamas
for the Soviets to find, ribbons in the dear
girls’ hair. Did their parents think they
were cheating the victors of their spoils?
Childless Hitler did the same with
his joyous shepherd Blondi.
Cynics might say Adolf was just testing
the cyanide Eva would soon consume.
But the mere thought of killing blameless
animals had long since shocked that butcher
into vegetarianism. He loved his dog.
And loved his Fräulein Effie, too.
The paired geese peck idly at insects
and preen. In the weeds, shadowy
carp mouth their omnivorous way.
And wriggling up from the mud to
the little island, lovestruck turtles
lay their innocent, reptile eggs.
Martyrs
In Stonewall Jackson’s eyewitness account, old
John Brown was made to stand - white-hooded
and noosed, for fifteen minutes on the scaffold -
while they maneuvered the solemn troops.
When the trap finally sprang, he strangled
for another like time, arms pinioned at the elbows,
hands sprung up helpless at ninety degrees,
clenching, unclenching...
Nothing really botched or unintended. The rope –
as Major Jackson’s sharp eye noted – was
measured for the standard four foot drop. In
the Commonwealth’s eyes, humane. Punishment
he certainly had coming. Better, when you think about
it, than three hours dangling on the Cross. Better than a young
French girl burnt alive for communing with angels. Easier
than Father Edmund Campion, drawn and quartered for
love of the scheming Pope. Brown’s was a predictable, Southern
end. Look what the old Yankees once did to witches. Look
at the chaos the new Yankees were itching to sow. The planters
could smell their steel shackled world, squirming with rage.
But politics and the age aside: martyrs lack all
common sense. The worst offer their blood in a bloody cause.
And if others simply decline to lie - none of them are pure.
To their inquisitors, even the meekest are angry lambs.
What’s gained but the hallelujah of judicial suicide...
Centuries earlier, Galileo Galalei may have been
agonizing along these lines when he bowed, recanted,
then retired to his garret window to sigh and mutely circle
an undeniable sun along with the slow twirling earth.
Did he escape his miserable fate? Or just suffer
nine more penitential years, choking on the
bonfired smoke of his smoldering work?
No one ever wrote a hymn to him or marched in
battle to its step. But in the Florence museum where
his papers repose, his right hand’s dessicated middle finger
is preserved under glass, a stubborn relic raised to glory.
Bankruptcy
It began - in the 1500s - as a convenience for creditors.
A sort of truce between predators, so that the fastest,
the most vicious couldn't just swagger in like a lion
and carry off the carcass with a roar. The purpose
of the procedure was to freeze the shivering
debtor in place, while his bankers negotiated
their nibbling rights. The wretch had little
to say. No preference, beyond a morbid curiosity,
as to who took which bite where. And after
the lawyers finished. After the lenders washed
their hands, disgusted at the slim pickings:
the court would often record its frustration
by ordering the Bankrupt's ear sliced off.
A permanent credit report, a warning to anyone
with money - Don't lend your money here.
A caution to anyone who borrowed - Don't fail.
But, of course, we all fail. Our teeth fail, our eyes
fail, our livers, our marriages and hearts. Dementia lurks
like a demon and nothing succeeds in the end.
Why would those with eyes to see
resist their credit cards - their platinum
road to ruin? A vacation in Rome, a wedding at the Ritz,
a year of nothing but the best. We've deposed the aristocracy.
We live in the republic of the free now, the democracy
of bliss where the lamb eats the lion's lunch.
When bankruptcy pours the wine,
only fools postpone joy. Justice is elusive.
But mercy is always within our grasp.
Hemingway at Sixty
In his sleep, he hears something burrowing under the house,
scraping at the grout in the tiled floor. Then wakes to find blood
spots on the pillow. Despite the sun, he just can’t seem to get warm.
Even so, he writes. But there’s no longer room for the old demons
on the page. The gaping mouths of the cabinet ministers and Guardia
kneeling in the mud have opened too wide. And he’s getting smaller
each week, each hour. His only hope is to lock them squirming
in the cellar. Who would the butchered slaughter if they could?
We marveled at the virtue, the humanity,
the optimism of those last works. At how he’d
mellowed and matured. We never noticed how tiny
he’d become in his skin. How fragile his eyes
seemed to be. How little of himself he’d come to own.
How the locks were being picked and the door was opening.
