even get this far? Why not just loan them the
money at high interest rates like they do to us?
OCTOBER—DESTROY OUR COUNTRY FIRST!
Doggone it, she sure is a regular joe sixpack hockey
mom kinda gal next door who’s gonna get that darn
fed’ral government to help out folks at Saturday’s
soccer game and’ll just have to not be too specific how
(wink wink) ‘cause doggone it who wants to hear about
her ol’ end times beliefs (what the heck, the world’s comin’
to an end soon anyway an’ Alaska, according to her pastor,
is gonna be the refuge state for all those believers in the
lower 48 who’ll need a place to run to when the anti-Christ
shows up—and we know who that might be (wink wink)
—and the Rapture sends all the Jews and Catholics and
atheists to hell and even some of those darn Protestants
who just don’t get it that there’s only one way to be saved)
with a gotcha satisfied smile behind every rehearsed lie.
NOVEMBER
It should be a no brainer, voting in the church
around the corner, walked to from my apartment
over sidewalks covered in such amazing
colors from the fallen leaves I feel incapable
of describing this scene, so vividly Autumnal,
such a range of hues, like us, thrilled and
overwhelmed with gratitude, there’s nothing
to compare it to, and yes, I did cry—“think
of the children” they constantly cried back
when I wanted a “black girl” for my bride,
now it looks like that argument was as
backward as I labeled it as a kid, ‘cause here
that theoretical child is—proving yes we can
—create a new world again. Knock on wood.
TEA PARTY SUMMER
Can you
believe
this shit?
I know
it’s all
mostly
contrived
but man
alive.
Or not
if the
“socialist”
“facist”
“foreign-
born”
“terrorist”
gets his
way with
us old
white men.
And women.
Like that one
collapsing in
tears sobbing
“I want my
America back . . .”
And yes some
of us see the
implied racism
in all that. But
it’s so
much
more.
A door
is closing
in their
universe
and they’re
afraid they’ll
be locked
inside forever.
They, and
even some
of us, can’t
see there’s
a window
still wide
open on the
other side.
The window
that’s letting
all that fresh
air in. Let
the future
begin.
SWING THEORY 2
The mood swings unpredictable but
reliable, from affectionate to hostile,
from I want you to I hope you have
a heart attack and drop dead now.
From get the fuck out of my house
to please please don’t go, from don’t
ever talk to me again to unable to stop
talking, from let’s play to don’t touch
me, from you retard lazy liar to you’re
so handsome stylish and cool. From
cruel to caring. Then react to insulting
jokes with anything but total accept-
ance or dare joke back in a similar
vein and: You’ll never see me again.
POEM ON THE THEME: ARTHRITIS
for John Godfrey
My Irish peasant
immigrant grandfather
the first policeman
ever in our Jersey town
—badge number one
—carried an old,
shriveled up, petrified
potato in his pants
pocket to ward off
the pain of arthritis and
fermented dandelion
juice he’d make in
his bathtub from
the yellow blossoms he
picked in the high
school playing field
across the street
from his little house.
Sometimes, when
he was even more drunk
than usual, we kids
would see him bent over
the grass with his
old, dark stained fedora
on his silver haired head,
a collarless shirt
no longer quite
white drooping down
over what we’d
all be giggling at but
secretly embarrassed
by, his underpants,
having forgotten to
put on the slacks in
the pocket of which
would be the old,
shriveled up, petrified
potato to ward off
the pain of his arthritis,
which obviously
he didn’t need on
these days, so intent
on harvesting the
dandelions, his square
unshaven silver speckled
jaw jutting forward
displaying the resolve
and fortitude necessary
for the only job he
seemed to have once
he retired from the force.
I never heard him
complain of any kind
of pain. Maybe that’s
why they called
him “Iron Mike.”
His seventh-grade
drop out son, my father
one of eight kids who
lived a while, though
one sister died in the
influenza pandemic of
1918, and one brother
in what my father always
felt was a phony
suicide attempt that went awry,
didn’t believe in
the old superstitions (though
his wife, my mother,
the high school graduate
of the family certainly
did, as she seemed
to also believe in
“the little people” she blamed
for household mishaps
that couldn’t be laid
at the feet of her six
children who lived
beyond infancy out
of the seven she had
that I was the youngest
of) so dad didn’t
carry an old petrified
potato around in his pants
pocket, but wore a
copper bracelet instead,
insisting it worked wonders
for his arthritic joints,
and maybe it did. I never
heard him complain
about any pain either,
except the kind he felt
I caused to his
heart and head.
Ma died from heart
failure after an operation
to remove cancerous
growths from her colon
and more, so my
father mo ved in with my
oldest sister who
was always ailing from
surviving childhood
diabetes, suffering much
pain from various
disorders as a result of it,
or the medications
used to fight it, and when
that war seemed finally
lost, daddy took to
his bed to beat her
to the other side, and did,
though she eventually
joined him there,
from her kidneys
giving out, after several
bouts with her own
cancers and heart failures
and enough pain to
go around for our whole
clan, if it was needed.
The last of my brothers
to join them passed
last year just as Spring
was about to arrive
and miss him, the only
cop among our siblings
and the only one to have
a bout of arthritis himself,
or so the awful pain in his
wrists was diagnosed
as for a while, after Lyme
Disease and several
other guesses. He kept them
wrapped in those
soft casts for several months,
doctors orders,
while they fed him various
medicines including
the antibiotics we’re all too
familiar with,
and then one day the pain
was gone, not that
he ever complained when
it was still there.
I remember one time visiting
him in a childless
old people’s enclave outside
of Atlanta, Georgia,
where he and his wife had
moved to be closer
to their gr own children and
their families who’d
left New Jersey for the newer
and bigger yet somehow
cheaper houses there with
one tenth the taxes they
faced here. When he bragged
about these facts,
I said, “Yeah, but you live in
Georgia” as he and I
took a walk around the complex
he seemed to be
the unelected mayor of, greeting
fellow retirees
with the same gruff brevity
he addressed the
rest of us with, until I had
to stop to catch
my breath and let the pain
in my chest that
still plagued me then subside,
as we paused
in our stroll around his domain
I asked him
if he ever had pain that kept
him from doing things
like mine was now, and his
abrupt reply I
should have foreseen after
a lifetime of
similar responses “And if I did,
what would be
the point of talking about it?”
which made me
smile at how reliable he’d
always been. He died
of a rare cancer they only
discovered when it
caused him to erupt in spots
and sores all over
his freckled Irish skin,
“stage four” they said
having missed the first
three and ordered up
heavy chemo sessions that
turned him from a
vital seventy-nine-year old
who could throw
heavy furniture into the back
of a truck by
himself that would take you
and me both to
lift a few inches off the ground,
he went from
that kind of older brother
(remember the scene
in Godfather Two where
the mob informant
is about to squeal to a
platform full of Senators
until he sees his aging
older brother, just
flown in from Italy,
sitting silently in the gallery
and clams up, accepting
prison or even death
before exposing himself
to his big brother’s
approbation, that’s the way
I felt about my brother
the ex-cop) who’d just driven
from Georgia to Jersey
and back again like a teenager
on a lark, but
after only two sessions of
this chemo supposed
solution, he was transformed
into a frail, old man
who couldn’t stand on his
own, or walk without
a cane at first, then walker,
then one of those
electric carts. He resisted
the final passage for
my sister-in-law’s sake,
not complaining of
the obvious pain let alone
discomfort, but
looking more sour with
every hour until
I told her to let him go,
bring him home
from the hospital for hospice
care and tell him
she’d fare okay on her own,
that he could go
home to where our sister
and other brothers
and parents had gone, and
as soon as she said it,
he did.
The only encounters
I’ve had with arthritis,
outside the above,
were when I made my first
movie with a Holly
wood star, whose hands
were so gnarled they
looked like mushrooms grew
wild under his pale skin.
John Carradine played
my character’s grand
father and still had the force
of all the roles I’d
seen him play since I was a boy,
as he stared at me from
behind the camera while
I prepared for my close up
at his supposed deathbed
and the director leaned in
to whisper in my ear
he’d like to see some tears
on my face then yelled
“Action!” and I panicked
thinking I’m not good enough
to cry on cue but John
Carradine stared into my eyes
with the intensity of his
and as I looked away in
search of an alternative
I saw his hands, those
knuckles erupting under
his skin with fierce
independence like an
alternative artwork of
organic confusion
blossoming into fingers that
extended in every direction,
uncontrollably bent and
stiffened and askew and
the tears flew from my eyes,
much to my surprise and
the rest of the cast and crew
who after “Cut!” was
shouted erupted in spontaneous
applause but none from
John Carradine who couldn’t
have clapped if he’d
wanted to, he just kept looking
into my eyes as he
nodded his head in approval
and smiled slyly.
As for me, knock
on wood, so far so good
when it comes to
the arthritis of my male
progenitors, though
not so good for other
ailments, like heart
problems I take more
medication for than
they even had back then,
or the cancer that
>
rendered me useless in
some departments
for awhile and kept me in
a hospital bed and
pain I didn’t mind complaining
of, though not as
much as I’d have liked to. It
gave me insight
into what these men and women
in my family en
dured so silently, an intensity
that only those who
have gone through it can
describe but so few
ever do. The best I could
come up with in
response to the priest who
stopped by my room
to ask how I was doing
one day, and as he
spoke I suffered a wave of
“discomfort” (in
quotes) as close to a ten on
the pain scale they
were always asking me to rate
as you can get, I
told him that before this experience
I always thought
God was Love, but now I
understood that
God is Pain, and he nodded as
though he under
stood as I do now, they are
the same.
SWING THEORY: 3
On Halloween afternoon the town
closed off the main street in the village
center plus part of the street the old
house our apartment was in was on
so the kids in their costumes could
wander the streets on their way to
getting candy from store owners. My
boy and some of his friends took a
break to throw a football around and
one kid left in a huff over something,
coming back with his parents, a gor-
geous young “black” woman and her
Waspy-styled “white,” though now
red-faced, husband looking angry.
Earlier sitting on the top step of the
stoop, noticing her in the street I felt
flattered that she looked at me with
seeming interest, but now she glared
behind her husband who was accusing
my little boy of harming his, because
of the color of his child’s skin! I was
calm at first pointing out I’d been there
all along and no one deliberately hurt
anyone, but that made him madder.
He was in my face, taller and heftier
than my skinny frame. I felt my own
rage start, then my heart screaming
with the angina I take medication for.
I tried to reason with this man calling
me and my boy prejudiced against his
because we were so-called “white”
Irish-looking males. I pointed out the
two best friends my son was standing
watching this with were brown, both
mixed race, one Asian and “white” the
other “black” and “white” like this man’s
son, but he didn’t seem to hear. I didn’t
want my son and his friends to see me
“chicken out” but as the chest pain in-
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