As we enter year 6 of the war in Iraq, exceed 4,000 American soldiers killed, and pass between 80 and 90,000 Iraqi civilians killed, I thought I'd publish this poem from 2003.

I am you, US

I have reams of dreams (just)
screamin to be released (to have peace)
from their back-shelf solitude,
where they brood with ceaselessly crude
but potentious attitude
hootin boozin and shootin
for my pie-in-the-sky artificial highs to trouble my
bubbly moods, to force me to the coarse/course
to peruse and eventually vocally, locally use
their unrequited blues to proclaim their slighted, urgent news
that I been lazy, my mind’s sinned (hazy)
thinkin I grinned on hi-fi, removed from
the drive-by’s shocksong when I’ve known all along
how quick that violently slick seedy shit has flown around
to grow from the common to my higher ground (zero)
where the 9-1-1 glow has shown we reap what’s been sown
(and sometimes I try to deny that it’s doubly towerin so
when single CEOs seem to run the show
and are deemed key-to-the-city worthy
to reap oily spoils when whole peoples cower
in fear since showerin heatful sparks sear memory
with clear signs of smoke-dark skies;
lies about global liability have choked stark responsibility).

Time to wake up, find what kind of forgotten-shelf shake-up
will make myself face up those woe-begotten tracts
of visionary facts that speed my evolutionary pace up
yet avoid those drastic acts that in time stoke the spastic fire
that chokes reasonable higher minds’ dream desires
into mean crime and smoke.

It’s been a long time since I seen my baby
I’s doin’ fine till the waves’ wat’ry sheen
Hit me like the sight of my all-night lady,
The day she caught me, queen of common things.

It’d been a long day and I’d lost my taste for breathing
So I stumbled my way to the tides’ in-out
Rise and fall gather-release, and its briny seething
Crept in my lungs’ creases, inspired a fell shout:

I twirl’d me ‘bout, hands to sky, fell to sand,
Unable to stand the ground’s harsh feel
I clawed reeling at sky to deny the land…
Then above me she appeared, so real

With briny breath to flavor unsavored ideas;
Wave-shine gaze to corrugate all dull metal mental haze;
Root-firm hands that delve through false-floor sterile veneer
Through fearful surface to grasp hidden, solid ways;

Hands that suddenly grasped me by my sailing palms,
Tugged me to gasping feet and flailing thoughts as my heart raced to keep up
As she dragged me smilingly to give thanks and alms
Through acrimonious, grungy alley’s blues-rock and hubbustling boulevard’s bebop

Of people like pebbles jostling through a landslide.
On a stroll like a cyclone we took the town by storm
Taking objects in our path with such force in our minds
That they took on new life, from freezing wrath to bliss-hued warmth.

Plastic tatters flagging the breeze from brightly barbed fence
Were transformed into hula skirt for the vain
As she crowned me king of uncontainable nonsense
With thirteen steely links of newly broken chain…

Somehow, after so long balanced by her passion spell
I lost her in the clenched teeth grind of the crowd’s respiration
So now I stand drenched on the shore of despairing pell-mell
And can only chant this disintegrating song’s aspiration:
Return, my love!

It’s been a long time since I seen my baby
I’s doin’ fine till the waves’ wat’ry sheen
Hit me like the sight of my all-night lady,
The day she caught me, queen of common things.

every passing thought that you discard, disregard, or partly destroy,
that flees the best of your mind’s ploys in the moment of its finding,
that dives to the deep without warning, as far gone as widows’ mourning,
must be followed down the steep descent into dark, like the reflection
of the eye’s shiny spark in the mirror, the neverending gaze amplified
regard in regard and never dies no matter how hard you try, how deep you fly

oh
so
bright.
spotlight blinds
you quite as surely
as it gives others sight.

Carwheels on gravel
like teeth crunching Grape Nuts
like rain on rubber stretched taut
like sizzling onions
Powerline poles
like marching soldiers suddenly surrendered
like strung-together marionettes
like synchronized swimmers
Thoughts on the road
like wildly, slowly growing ivy
like the water cycle (liquid-solid-liquid-gas)
like metaphors

When I was a young student, stuck in the limbo of still wearing my pigtails but already bearing my period, my two most powerful educational experiences:

One of my teachers told me he had something that he wanted to show me. So he brought me into the most out-of-the-way bathroom in the school, on the fourth and top floor, where few people ever went. He brought me inside, and since I was just a child, I was not worried until I saw him shut and lock the door behind us. He walked toward me, and I started to feel panic pounce, but then he continued past me. My worry turned to confusion as I saw him unlatch the window, slide up the pane, and hoist himself through to the roof. As he turned and extended his hand to me, I understood: he was inviting me to escape. We walked to the edge of the roof and peeked at the pavement below, the neat rectangles of the sidewalk. My teacher gestured vaguely at the view, and told me that sometimes in order to get a better perspective you need to get above and beyond the structures that have been made to contain you. He risked everything – job, career, reputation – in order to tell me that. As if I didn’t know it instinctively already.

One of my classmates was taped to the post in the center of the school cafeteria. I remember I was sick that day, or on the other side of the school or something. As I remember it, I was terrified upon hearing this story with its grisly details. The detail that really destroyed me was not that practically the entire school, which habitually mobs the cafeteria during passing periods, had looked on as the bullies manhandled their scrawny catch, looped duct tape around him and left him bound to go to class… but rather what killed me was when I was told that not a single student out of six hundred set him free once the bullies left, leaving him there for five minutes until a teacher happened along. I remember being horrified by this event, grateful that I wasn’t there to witness it, yet fascinated by its implications.

Anyways, I have a terrible memory. So I hold on to what I remember as if it were a teddy bear and I a baby.