Is Anyone Really Surprised?
If You Tell Yourselves Lies Long Enough, Of Course You'll Kill To Protect Them
Moderation, as I’ve often pointed out since the mid-60s, makes nothing happen. It’s a lot like poetry, clinging to outdated conventions and obsequiousness that turns clueless “patriots” into heroes, whenever convenient.
September 11th fetishists. Raise your hand.
Most of the “heroes” who died that day had no idea they could have avoided their fate if Fubar Dubya Bush had simply shared a Presidential Daily Briefing he ignored a month and two days prior to 9/11, which was the 28th anniversary of the CIA assassination of Salsa Sal Allende.
This poem was written much earlier.
Disclaimer: I never went to Vietnam. I just lost friends there and I spent some time with the flotsam of that war of the nation of miserable fucks at the specialized treatment center in Ft. Gordon, GA. This poem was inspired by two of the corpsmen I met there. They figure in several of my better poems about the meaninglessness of contemporary existence.
That There Is No Justice
does not surprise me as the spark
between my finger and the doorknob does
footsteps clumping up behind me
even at noon
in front of the precinct house
frighten me more than the bomb
the one bomb bothers me
as much as the dozens and the scores
and the single hate-contorted face
calling for the death of this or that
is more horrifying than the thousands
of millions who are willing
to die for what somebody else
tells them to believe
In a past life I was a medic only
who ran to the cry
when the call came there was no time
to listen to the teeth crack
when my boots tromped on the fallen faces
or determine which groans
belonged to the living
and which my weight forced
from calcifying lungs
so whenever I pass the empty cups
of men who ask for quarters
and no longer remember what quarter means
I imagine their faces on those
who were silent beneath my feet
as I ran to put an end
to the howling
of the pain
Christmas Eve, 1985
Outside Boring, Oregon
I see the end says from Boring, Oregon. I grew up there. Always had to tell people it’s a place not a state of mind. I lived in. More rural area not very close actually. But when I was growing up our address Route 1 Box 502, Boring, Oregon.
Amen, brother. Amen. Your powerful poem from the past helps me recall my own contribution to the H.G. Wells time machine capsule.
I read the following poem, a dark satire, some time in the mid-Seventies at a reading in support of world peace at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. Half way through my reading, some guy in the front row suddenly jumped up, pointed a finger at me and shouted "Death to all Jew haters!" and then stormed out. I admit it rattled me a bit and I think I reacted like Jack Benny's character playing Hamlet in the 1942 black comedy, "To Be Or Not To Be", when he paused a moment in disbelief as he watched a patron walk out in the middle of his soliloquy.
After I had finished reading my poem, there was the usual polite applause. But as I was leaving the stage, Cecil Williams, the progressive advocate and pastor of Glide (who died just last month), came up to me, took both my hands in his and said, "The truth never dies."
PROGRESS WAS MADE ON THE WEST BANK TODAY
terrorist or extremist
extremist or terrorist
it gets confusing if you think about it
so let's be sensible for a minute
a Palestinian terrorist
is certainly not the same as
a Jewish extremist
such labels are meant to be defined
for although both types set off bombs
and without much discretion
it is the terrorist
who causes fear and godlessness
while the extremist
promotes belief in a civilization
with advanced views
the separation here is crucial
and the opinion of the facts are plain
the terrorist bombs on the front page
the extremist bombs on page 12
this is done
so you can tell whose side
you're not on
--Paul Fericano. from "Commercial Break" (Poor Souls Press, 1982)