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Bread and Circuses

Bread and Circuses
(after a debate in 2016)

I know I’m not the only one
He yells into the microphone
Dismissing anyone he’s talking to
Sometimes with a literal wave

He wears too-long neon ties
And cannot carry a moment of
Dignity, let alone civility
Has he ever been polite a
Day in his life?

Yet he’s our front-runner
Why? Because he’s got us
Paying for it, and we’re buying
Him, his shtick, his cant

He reaches the mad part of us
(“Mad” in both ways)
He’s catharsis when he’s gone

But we’re acting as if
We want to elect him to stay

February 26, 2016 3

Tornado Forms and Passes Through

Tornado Forms and Passes Through

A tornado touched down here;
That doesn’t happen often

In the Midwest, I used to drive
Underneath funnel clouds forming
Within a sky of green and yellow

Sometimes the tornado formed
Sometimes it didn’t finish

Here there was the locomotive
Sound, and all things went awry

Gravestones lay flat upon the
Ground—parts of houses and
Other buildings rolled over
Discarded stone and memory

Roofs of schoolhouses pushed
Deep inside—the Amish will
Give to municipal authority

A list of broken property to
Be fixed in community, alone

The Red Cross Is here, while
We number what is lost,
Remembering simultaneously

What is to be thanked; for
This was a fatal happening

Yet stolid folk are quick to
Say it could have been much
Worse, because it has—retellings

From the cobwebbed past given
Anew to current, digital media

Meantime the sun remembers
To return to us a blessing now

February 26, 2016 2

Many Waters

Many Waters

The ocean’s acidic
Ruining its own reefs
Shipwrecks in the Gulf
Of Mexico merge with
Oil remains from spills
Creating new corrosion
In waves

This is global occurrence
We are mostly water,
After all

February 26, 2016 3

epigraph (and then we laugh)

epigraph (and then we laugh)

who am I, I do not know
am I you, far down below

do I cheat when I arise
see the world with only eyes

will I rest, when I am done
in a place where we are one:

all things sensed, and with a will
cherish what we might and still

February 25, 2016 11

Random

Random

Now

The town that has a gal,
According to Glenn Miller’s band

Has lost that trust in wrecked
Romance; the “sweetest gal”
No longer waits in Kalamazoo,
Does she?

And does he want to explain
Himself? The driver who took
Fares when bouts of shooting
Anyone was done

Silently, she now attends
In another state of place,
Gated from harm

(random shootings in Kalamazoo,
one killer who worked taxi-like)

February 25, 2016 6

Delhi and Flint

Delhi and Flint

Pay for water; no water comes
Forth

There is no Moses at the spring
To channel water from an
Ordinary source made
Miraculously (cleanly) abundant
Through divine agency

Flint, a town in Michigan,
Faced with lead-infecting water
For the families and the other
Centers of community

Delhi, the second most-populated
City, now with broken waterways
Facing silent threats of thirst
And starvation and disease

Mis-directed plans, protests
Aggressive, violent

Innocents trapped between;

For lack of clean, living currents,
Why cannot—in global, protected
Pipes the size of bunkers made
Of (lead-free) new solid kinds
Of concrete and PVC (see, plastic
Can have its use)—why cannot

The world simply drink?

I’d do the same with food to
Stave off starving, if I could, and
Disease, if it could be tunneled
Under without harming anything,
Beneath

But instead of magic utterances
Or nations’ decrees

I have only these

February 24, 2016 5

Half the Nation

Half the Nation

Half of all Syrians trying to escape—
Too many, for one reason or
Another—failing

Running not due to defiance, not
Because they are combatants

They run because otherwise
They’re killed

Can you imagine half of a nation’s
People trying to run from war?

I’m not sure I can

Help,
Please, help

That is my cry from my safe,
If disabled place

At least, for lack of bombs exploding
Near my children’s ears, I can hear
And feel to think

What else shall we do?

To make homes not over-wrought
But simply safe from civil—civil, we
Call it that—extinction

After half are gone, what can the
Remainder do? This is not simple
Math:

Half a nation left is not division,
There is no numeric cohesion, for

What is left is unmeasured ones of
Split in twos

First ones fled into frightening beyond-
Numbering equations

(news covered in The Skimm,
dailyskimm@morning7.theskimm.com)

February 24, 2016 2

Black Life Matters

an opinion expressed potently
in a White House meeting about
murdered Blacks, the living
marginalized—here’s my response

Black Life Matters

Do I even need to say it
Yes, I do

My best friend was Black
He died too young—
Complications from surgery

What a teacher
And a humorist as well
At least, to me

I am not Black, part
Native American according
To a family historian,
Which is good, though
Looking at me, I doubt
That you could tell

I am not female; I am
The enemy: an older,
White male

I eschewed the ol’-boy
Invitation and have
Often paid the price

Not in my life (though
Maybe there, too)
But in my work
In which I’ve lost the
Favored political place

Maybe each one has
A circle drawn around
From fear and politics

Leaving that (or never
Entering) means that
Protection from the
Core is not available

And some measure of
Persecution too easily
Is acted on

“Loving Engagement”
From a better Black-drawn
Circle of union and
Society change—I don’t
Know if I’ll be let in,
Resembling and, appropriately
(Regrettably), perceived

I’d stay in the back
And write my verse
In which I argue that
All are free

And should be free

That to usurp the job of
God in assessing human
Worth is about as wrong
As this world can get

Black folk (Black discourse
Uses that word; and,
Being from Kentucky, I like
Folk and folks, though I’d
Change the old state-song
Lyrics, too)—Black folk are
Self-determining, of course

I cringe to have to make the
The claim, as all persons,
Being made, are free and
Free to choose

(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/20/barack-obama-black-lives-matter-meeting?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Version+CB+header&utm_term=157937&subid=16706344&CMP=ema_565)

February 23, 2016 4