with you. And not just you, but others too.
Oh people people let us start anew
and pledge right now to each other
that we will no longer take part in any project
whether business or art or any affair
of the heart or collaboration or conversation
or celebration or even thought that isn’t true.
So let’s start, right here, with me
& you—& you & you & you & you
& you . . .
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
all the forbidden fruit I ever
dreamt of—or was taught to
resist and fear—ripens and
blossoms under the palms of my
hands as they uncover and explore
you—and in the most secret
corners of my heart as it discovers
and adores you—the forbidden fruit
of forgiveness—the forbidden fruit
of finally feeling the happiness
you were afraid you didn’t deserve—
the forbidden fruit of my life’s labor
—the just payment I have avoided
since my father taught me how—
the forbidden fruit of the secret
language of our survivors’ souls as
they unfold each other’s secret
ballots—the ones where we voted
for our first secret desires to come
true—there’s so much more
I want to say to you—but for
the first time in my life I’m at
a loss for words—because
(I understand at last)
I don’t need them
to be heard by you.
BAD BOYS AND WOMEN WHO WANT IT ALL
I wasn’t bad,
I was just misunderstood.
I wasn’t trying to burn down my grammar school.
I was just experimenting out of boredom,
to see how much oxygen it took to keep the
matches going before I slammed my desk shut
on the flames—and one time I waited too long.
But hey, that’s how you learn, right?
I was just bored—weren’t you?
Isn’t that why you wanted it all,
while I got suspended, expelled,
kicked out, arrested, tried, court
martialed, exiled, 86ed, asked to leave,
fired, let go, walked out on, divorced,
broke, hurt, kicked in the ass, the
heart, the brain, again and again,
knowing all along it was only because
I was misunderstood—but I understood
you, and you understood me, I was
the bad boy and you were the woman
who wanted it all, wanted the flowers
and the poems, the soft caress and
the sweet sweet acceptance of your
getting it all wrong every time you
tried to dress the part or break my
heart because I was too bad when all
you wanted was just bad enough to
make you feel the love was tough
enough to last and still be passionate.
But bad boys don’t last, that’s
what makes them bad—you can’t
depend on them for anything but
not being there when it gets too
square and you want square too
because you are the woman who
wants it all—the lawyer and
the biker bum, the guy who never
leaves and the guy who only knows
how to run. And you think you might
see that in me because I’m slowing
down, I’m learning how to clown
around with the bad boy image
before it gets sad ‘cause a guy
ain’t a boy no more. I mean bad boys
are one thing but bad old men—
that’s something else again,
even when you’re the woman
who wants it all.
ATTITUDE, GRATITUDE, AND BEATITUDE
The news all seems bad—
just like it all seemed good only a year or so ago—
the money isn’t where we thought it was—
neither are we—
How does it work?
Does anybody know?
Where did the music go?
Did you see Michael Jackson’s video?
I did this thing I do—I saw this woman and
felt the need to give her all my power—then
I couldn’t think of anything but her & getting
her to be my mate because I needed her because
she had the power.
“So what,” they say, “that’s nothing new.”
They think I did the same with you.
I know, it’s true that
recessions come & go, like wars, conspiracies,
& music you can really listen to.
What’s permanent is—what?
That’s what we all would like to know.
It isn’t attitude—thank God that changes
as we grow. It isn’t gratitude—sometimes
it comes too slow or not at all—& what
the hell is “beatitude” anyway?—another
fancy word for feeling good at nobody’s
expense? I call that “love”—the only
guarantee of happiness, & not for me
coming from you but coming from me
for whatever, if I can let the fear of
loving go—you know—like how you feel
when you just love that song or pet or
painting or book or person or job or joke
or all that stuff you loved so long ago—
or not so long ago. Do it again—let
the fear of loving go—no matter what you
know—because you know this too—that
it is the only way to go to go.
MORE THAN ENOUGH
there’s more than more than more than
more than enough so why isn’t enough enough and where is it
written that enough will never be enough except
in the amazing arrogance of societies and
institutions and governing bodies of immune deficiency
allowances of tabloid mentalities that breeed breeeed
breeeeed breeeeeeed breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed infinity when
all we are asking for is food.
all we are asking for is enough space to live a life of
enough space to enough space to live a life of gratitude
when all we are asking for is no more hope no more dope no
more ways of being anything less than the stewards of all
that god has created including each other which means
caretakers which means taking care of which means caring for
each other and every other living thing and everything is
living from that star that is supposed to have died so many
thousands of years ago and yet still shines in your eyes to
that grain of sand in the shoe of the man sleeping on the rock
of all our past discouragement—
I’m talking about the reason we are here today
to look at each other and say what can I do for you
to help you get through whatever lack is causing you pain or
sadness or fear or anger or feelings of victimization—
there is only one nation, and it is the nation of
love, we weren’t wrong in the ’60s we were just too
self-righteous about it thinking whatever made us shout
also gave us the clout to have it all our way so I ask
today for the humility of the saints and the bodhisattvas,
the courage of the martyrs and the Kama Sutra the love of
every god who ever gave solace to any lonely soul like
mine and y
ours, I am reassured by that love no matter how
many tanks and guns and chemical weapons our collective
greed has ignited in the hearts of even lonelier souls who
have no recourse but belligerence and death to satisfy the
myth of their invulnerability—
we are all vulnerable, today’s success stories, tomorrow’s
homeless, let us all be warriors for love as if we were
sent from above to heal these wounds of neglect, because,
hey, guess what—we were.
IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE
One what?—
Nigger, kike, wop, honky, paddy, redneck, frog,
cocksucker, bastard, bitch, motherfucker, dog—
punk, nerd, dweeb, sissy, jerkoff, creep,
queen, faggot, bulldyke, Republican sheep,
right-wing, leftist, Trotskyite, capitalist pig,
facelifted faketitted phony-in-a-wig,
impotent, premature ejaculator,
stand-up comic, poet, actor,
waiter, chauffeur, screenwriter, masturbator,
sibling, in-law, spouse, kid, victim, manipulator,
codependent, alcoholic, addict, abuser,
liar, cheater, thief, quitter, loser,
photographer, reporter, lawyer, dealer,
doctor, chef, model, hair-stylist, healer,
quack, booshie, commie, jock, gambler, gangster,
fuck-up, greedhead, homie, rambler, prankster,
hippie, yuppie, beatnik, artist, freak,
monster, asskisser, cartoonist, geek,
hoser, dickhead, wanker, slant-eyed dwarf,
fatso, pasty-face, nothin-but-soft,
sexist, racist, ageist, whore,
Buddhist, born-again, sober bore,
white, brown, yellow, red, black and blue,
he, she, them, us, it, me, you,
rocks, mountains, clouds, trees,
rivers, valleys, inlets, seas,
birds, horses, whales, kittens, bees . . .
Hey!—
This could go on forever,
when all we really gotta say is:
Everything and us—
Us
and
everything—
from the smallest quark
to the biggest galaxy—
it’s all the same,
and it only takes one
to know one.
One what?
MARCH 18, 2003
(Libellum 2004)
from MARCH 18, 2003
I don’t have any answers,
just some questions:
Who’s gonna win the Oscar for best actor?
Was Bush sedated at that press conference?
When innocent people die is it worse
than when the guilty do?
Guilty of what?
Can you define dry drunk?
Are you as tired as I am
of these right-wing fundamentalists
trying to reverse what little progress
we’ve managed to make in our attempts
to create, as Che once said, a world
where love is more possible?
Are some kids more precious than others?
[ . . . ]
Do my relatives in uniform support Bush
because the right-wing fundamentalists
are really that good at manipulating the media,
a media mostly owned by them
but which they continue to attack as liberal
in order to debunk any questioning of their tactics
and actions by the small percentage
of media outlets that are halfway independent of them?
You call this a poem?
Are the Arabs to blame for their problems?
Are Native Americans?
Are Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland?
Are the Tutus? The North Koreans?
Patty Hearst? Muhammad Ali?
Chris Reeves? The Jews? The Tibetans?
Southern Baptists? Hollywood?
Wall Street? Enron? Ford? Mariah Carey?
Crispin Glover? The Catholic priesthood
The Chechens? The Colombians?
The troops in Kuwait and Iraq?
Are we?
What makes me think I can wait till the last minute
to write a poem about how humbled
I am by the idea
that poetry can do anything to stop
the carnage anywhere—except in our hearts
however briefly?
Wasn’t I the only veteran on the stage,
the night in 1966 when I took part in my first
anti-war poetry reading?
If Bush wins in Iraq and Osama is caught and
the economy rebounds enough to give people
some hope is his reelection inevitable?
Is it inevitable anyway?
Should those who voted for Nader be forced
to apologize to the innocent victims of Bush’s policies?
Or for his renewed attack on the environment
in the hypocritical but seemingly successful guise
of a man who actually cares about clean air?
Why are Democrats who are smart enough and
tough enough and good enough politicians to play hard ball
with the right-wing pricks so rare?
Do we only care about war
and the innocent lives it takes
when Americans are at risk?
Isn’t it obvious that wars never end,
they just move?
What good did our pointing out that Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King were only assassinated
after they stopped talking about race and began
talking about class and the rights of poor people do?
Isn’t it obvious these right-wing fundamentalists
are still pissed off about what FDR did for working folk
with social security and tried to do with health care
and other programs that they’ve since managed to
dismantle or are still attempting to? Isn’t it ironic
how much they hate Carter for being a true Christian
and showing them up for the hypocrites they are?
Do these right-wing fundamentalists really believe
that the founding fathers were born-again Christians
who believe, like Bush, that only they’ll go to heaven
when “the rapture” comes,
when the framers of the constitution
barely believed in organized religion
and none took the Bible literally?
If the right-wing fundamentalists
really believe we should all follow the Bible’s
directions, why wasn’t Newt Gingrich
buried in sand up to his neck and stoned to death
when he cheated on his first wife with his second
and then on his second with his third?
Can you get more hypocritical than to try and impeach
a president for adulterous sex with an intern
when you are doing the same exact thing
at the same exact time?
Is it true even Newt thinks this attack on Iraq is ill conceived?
[ . . . ]
In the past, wasn’t the vast right-wing conspiracy
always on the wrong side of history—
for the king, against the revolution,
for slavery, against the eight-hour day,
for child labor and Jim Crow segregation,
against votes for women,
for legal discrimination, against immigrants
and Catholics, Hispanics and African Americans,
for treating corporations like privileged
individuals, and individuals like
corporate privileges?
Or is history still on their
side with that one, as corporate power
/>
grows and equality slows, at least the kind
based on the chance to make a living?
Isn’t it true that during the fabulous
fucked-up fifties they pretend to be
so nostalgic for, they ignore the part
about how ordinary citizens won the war
and came home to a nation tired of
depression and built unions strong enough
to give a working man a chance to
own a home and keep up with the Joneses
if not the Walkers and Bushes?
Wasn’t the difference between liberal capitalists
and conservative capitalists summed up best
by JFK’s old man during the Depression—
when he said he was willing to give up half of what he had
to keep the other half while
the conservatives aren’t
willing to give up anything?
Wasn’t the first thing they protected after 9/11
offshore banking and headquarters for corporations
and wealthy individuals to avoid paying the taxes
the rest of us do even if that’s how and where
the terrorists and drug barons hide their money too?
Wasn’t the next thing they bailed out the airlines
because of all the fuel they use and anything that
helps make unconscionable profits for oil companies
is their first priority?
[ . . . ]
Didn’t the CIA overthrow
the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953
with the help of a Nazi collaborator
who immediately set up 25-year leases
on Iran’s oil for three U.S. firms including Gulf Oil?
Didn’t Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA head of that region,
retire shortly thereafter to a
vice presidency of—Gulf Oil?
Didn’t the CIA back the coup
that overthrew the democratically elected
president of 1950s Guatemala because of his proposal
to nationalize some of United Fruit’s vast holdings?
Didn’t Walter Bedell Smith,
the CIA man in charge, within a year
become a member of the board of directors
of—you guessed it—The United Fruit Company?
Does anyone see echoes of that today
in Cheney’s connections to Halliburton
or Bush’s to Enron?
Isn’t it true that this shit has been going on forever?
Isn’t it also true that our government,
which usually means one of the secret agencies
with secret funding for which the Constitution
never allowed,
trained and paid the leaders of Al Qaeda
in the Afghan proxy war with the Soviets
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