Posts for June 2, 2020 (page 11)

it seems, to me, a rule of the universe:
no accountability means no restraint

no restraint tends to bring out
the worst
in people

give a former school bully (or, more likely, a bullied child)
a gun and tell them, as law enforcement,
they don’t have to follow the law

they can have dark tinted windows
they can speed and run stop signs and red lights
they don’t have to use turn signals
they can change lanes however they want
they can have expired tags

let them get away with the “little things”–

that’s how it starts

give a low-IQ thug with a fragile ego an ugly militaristic costume
a badge and a mandate: 
generate revenue and
jam good people up for victimless
“crimes”

when they hurt people,
make sure to excuse them
make sure the police union
and corrupt prosecutors 
protect them from
any 
accountability

what happens to a person like that, over time

they become, increasingly,
ego-driven violent sadists
who are such
cowards
they will murder an unarmed person

not just kill–
murder

they delight in inflicting pain and suffering

such a person should turn in their humanity card,
their badge, their gun
–every fucking one of them–
they either are the bad cop
or they enable them, 
which is, in a way, even more
heinous

demons,
that’s what they are–
real-life
monsters

with qualified immunity

I watch as my mother sorts through the myriad of bottles
Carefully reading each label and jotting down pill counts and dates
She adjusts her Wal-Mart readers as she moves to all the secret stashes 
All this for the silver-haired couple sitting next to me finishing their ice cream
I mentally take notes on how to do this and preserve dignity
One day I will be the one counting the pills and scooping the ice cream.

Quick to anger

You put on feelings
like a jacket
to break the chill wind
of my desire.

I ask you to leave
room for me
in your soul’s sleeve
and you stop.

“Must you take everything?”
you ask
and toss my request
into the air.

I follow its flight
with ardent eyes
and catch it
with eager hand.

“You should have let it fall,”
you say,
“for it is shattered
already!”

Pine Mountain Cemetery           
             Old Ben  

His three corner stone echoes
Hats worn by fellow soldiers
Fightin’ a war way back, ‘fore memory
Today can capture the worst of it.  
Tall, too, way more than most.
Lived ten by ten, such a stretch. 

Lanky, pants just to raw ankle
Bones. Strong, way I hear it
No man in these here parts could
Hold a candle to what he could lift.  
Never went in the mines, proud
He was, so let the earth keep
Him in what little he needed.

Smart, oh he knew things way
Beyond the ken of us shorter men.  
Planted trees, mostly apple, peach
Plum, paw paw. Kept his clan’s
Sweet tooth washed in pure honey.
Talked a rabbit into his stew slick
As you might want to see or tell.  

Mr. Ben, you rest good now. Likes
Of you won’t never walk again in a world
Gone crazy seekin’ room and the peace
You had and kept and offered back
To us ’uns too dull to grab the gift.

The left side of his driveway, guided by the rock wall he stacked in 1962, narrows at the mouth like the old man’s at the news of another stone corner cracked by a seemingly blind backerupper, the wall does not lunge at bumpers, so he swears, and he shouts Slovak obscenities, while the old woman, graceful and wise, rolls her eyes, begging, Chuck, please, sixty odd years of similar exchanges dubbed the pair Sweet Heat, Brown Sugar, beacon of light for souls blown sideways by fiery squalls of the Heat, so he retreats to his cave to collect his rage, taking inventory, meanwhile:

Few dozen ball jars in assorted sizes, butter beans, spare coffee pots, twelve to fifteen kerosene lanterns (one, he notes, once rode on a carriage), ancient nail pulling apparatus, enough scrap wood to rebuild the house twice, empty JIF jars labeled minnows in sharpie on half-stuck scotch tape, wrenches/drivers/pliers floating in formation, petite cauldron of lead, hooks and lines, mounted antlers, unmounted antlers, cardboard scratched with notes dated 1997, Len jedno je potrebné published in 1907, etc., etc. 

This collection of junk that breeds in the shadows cast by Carnegie beams and cools a man made of molten steel enough, at least, to rejoin his Sweet

Long before the city opens
its yawning rev and rumble,  

and the sun is still snuggled
under horizon’s dark blankets,  

the birds send up
their festive invitations:  

mantra of twittered gossip,
melodious zen enticements.  

I sit on my balcony,
sleep a distant remembrance,  

interrupted nightly by the dance
of worst case scenarios:                     

fever, fires, insane
men who rule the world.  

The black sky soothes
the oppression of clouds.  

With all that we have lost,
is it wrong to love these birds?  

To feast upon
their joyous seeds of hope?  

Robin, red-breasted
Blackbird, red-winged
Sue, red all over  

Those who walk
fearless
into the copper jacket
of summer  

song of freedom

I wake to the murderous caw of the crow
announcing his day of eating the eggs
of songbirds                        
                       the world has  become too
hard to bear, this beautiful world
devoured by ugly minds.

(A Golden Shovel inspired by lines from Together, 
a memoir by Judy Goldman)

“We’re all in danger every second. The world is (just) waiting to trip us up.”

I wonder if we’re
conscious of all
those black holes we fall in—
those massive vats of danger
where space-time’s every 
fold creates fabric few give second
thought to?  And yet, to grasp the
chaos of this world,
scientists spend half-lives asking “is
that what causes gravity?” Waiting 
light years for new physics to 
tumble them face-first, to trip
them across thresholds that elude us,
will they look in instead of up?

I’ve been washed clean by the Alabama rain.
Been baptized by the thick, blue smoke of papa’s cigar smoke.
I’ve patted red clay from the backyard on my wounds.

The soles of my feet have been coal black.
I met the Holy Ghost more times than I can count.
I can swing my finger any direction and it will point North.

It’s all apple pie and barbed wire.
Mason jars and molotovs.
Powder room white carpet bloodshed.

I’ve seen words of warning sewn into a hymn.
I’ve gripped cast iron tight till the sirens fell.
I’ve heard project bricks speak to me in tongues of fire.

And what I learned in Birmingham was to see blood before I yelp,
And to coat a “thank you” in thorns before I speak it,
And how to beat that ass from Selma to Montgomery with a smile.

A doily over a crowbar
won’t soften the blow.
Fuck with it if you want to.