Staring
Down A Barrel
It doesn’t matter what set it off,
so I’m not going to wrack my brain to remember,
but when we exited the expressway at Hildebrand,
both going east,
we were displaying our middle fingers at each other.
We stopped for the light side by side,
with about three cars in front of each of us.
It was a hot day, and our windows were down,
so he yelled something at me in Spanish
and I replied with a shouted, “¡Idiota!”
Then he pulled the gun on me.
It was a big revolver –
not being a gun person I couldn’t guess the calibre –
but the barrel I was looking down seemed fuckin huge.
It took me less than a second
to suss the situation:
being stuck in traffic he’d be a sure bet
to pad Texas
if he pulled the trigger,
so I shouted, “Shoot, motherfucker!
Go ahead, chickenshit, shoot!”
He put the gun away
and once again displayed his middle finger in my direction.
A few seconds later the light changed and we drove off,
he turning right on Broadway and me turning left.
Big Countries
One of the main reasons
why the ruling classes
in Russia , the US , China ,
India , and Brazil
are so repressive and environmentally destructive
is that those countries
are just too damn big
to govern respectfully and responsibly
and can provide those ruling classes
with entirely too much plunder.
Nationalist
Antipathy
I watched the Ireland-US pool
match
in the 2011 rugby world cup –
with the sound off and some
music on, of course –
because it was broadcast
in the afternoon,
free on the Maori channel,
and delayed, so I knew that Ireland
If any of these factors had
been absent
I would’ve just gone with the
music and left the TV off.
It had to be on in the arvo
because I go to bed early.
It had to be free, of course,
because although my pension
means
that I’m not as impecunious as
I used to be,
I still can’t afford pay TV.
It had to be on the Maori
channel,
as even if I could afford Sky
TV I wouldn’t have watched the game on it
because the militaristically
American promos for their world cup coverage
turned me off completely.
I had to know in advance that Ireland
because I can only enjoy live
sport if I don’t care who wins
and all that stars-and-stripes
shit
disgusts me beyond words.
The Little Things
A long time ago
I saw a photo
of an African-American man –
then called a nigger
and a boy –
surrounded by a mob
of self-satisfied-looking rednecks
who’d just lynched him
from the limb of a tree.
Most were grinning for the camera,
as people do.
His boots’ laces
remained neatly tied.
It’s impossible to know
what he was thinking
when he’d tied them
so neatly
that morning.
He’d shaved that morning, too, I suppose.
American Cuisine
Y’know, I really don’t give a shit
if the hopelessly corrupt
American power elite
decided to classify pizza
as a vegetable for school lunches
in response to large political donations
from corporate interests.
If the US
wants to enfeeble
the future cannon fodder
for its endless imperialistic wars
that’s its business.
Right-Wing Politics and Underclass Culture
When the American ruling class
executed its de facto coup d’état
in the nineteen eighties,
for some reason
the primary secular music
of African American culture
began shifting
from soul to soulless.
This may or may not be connected –
although I tend to think it is,
since they both involve a shift
from community and compassion
to reptilian egotism.
Southern
Belle Back Then
It wasn’t easy
being a Southern Belle
back then,
when the only skills
that society allowed her
were graciousness and prettiness,
and all of the Suitable Young Men,
especially Simon Lee,
the one her folks preferred for her,
seemed to have minds
filled with huff-and-puff,
no ambitions beyond
their daddies’ businesses,
and pale, cold eyes
dead before their time.
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
to
know that the Boy
who
did yardwork for her daddy,
whose
mother, Mary,
was
the household cook
and
whose name was really Walter,
was
the most beautiful man
she
was ever likely to see.
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
in
love with a nigra
who
was afraid
even
to look at her,
no
matter what tricks she tried
in
order to get him to do so.
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
who
was obsessed with
dreams
and schemes
of
finding a way
to
run off to New York or Boston
or
one of those places,
with
her Walter,
while
sitting on the veranda
with
horrid Simon Lee
when
he came to call.
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
when
the only way she could speak
to
the man she loved
was
to order him to do jobs for her,
and
even then he’d just say,
“Yes,
Miss,” with his eyes
firmly
on the ground,
but
somehow letting her know
that
he felt it, too.
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
when
her brother Eugene was watching
the
one time Walter looked up
and
their eyes met
with
meaning
before
he dropped his gaze
back
to the ground.
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
to
hear Eugene and her daddy
tell
her how they and Simon Lee
had
got together with
some
Good Ole Boys
and
hanged that nigger
that’d
been bothering her
from
the old oak tree
out
past the crossroads,
“and
you shoulda seen
his
eyeballs bulgin’ –
it
was funnier’n hell.”
It
wasn’t easy
being
a Southern Belle
back
then,
or
afterwards,
living
with this until she died,
even
after
running
away to New York
and
becoming the kept woman,
of
a cruel Black drug dealer
and
racketeer
up
in Harlem ,
who
beat her no more
than
she thought she deserved
didn’t
help at all.
Unamerican
The more a person with an open mind,
intellectual honesty, and a modicum of intelligence
learns about the history of the United States of America
the more glaringly obvious it becomes
that the nation and its official ideology
have always been more bullshit than substance.
