Justice Barbie

(27 late)

Justice Barbie!

Like tequila, one sip leads to if
I bump into old Malcolm X in the morning
when I’m supposed to be making a poem for Robin
and Charlie I’m all it’s the ballot or the bullet
for the rest of the day and meaning it, meaning
justice in a way that wouldn’t bother to say the word
though I might look up Chomsky on education
send a snippet to Evan and Eamon but no justice
probably trademarked by some honky designer
of disposable plastic manufactured in China.

There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.

My pal John goes to China to make plastic gewgaws
and has to bring his own food and water.
Says it stinks real bad. Is that a related issue
and should it be explained in a poem.

“Justice Fine Cutlery in Primrose Pink”

If you and I were Americans there’d be no problem
my country ‘tis not of me, though as grandmother
pointed out when I began bringing home
this particular vintage, this is my America since
I can be mad as Malcolm X to which I explained
that’s because we’re crackers, gran, and surely none
of this politics has any place in poetry, maybe old
Tom Jefferson, he takes a seat in real poems
who read architecture books he'd ordered from Boston
so he could let more light and space in a house

oh Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.

Notions of self-evidence sadly hamstrung
for any gal who sipped postmodernism in the 80s or
even these ironic days when Bruce needs poetry,
or just light and space, at least truth spreading
easy like a lamp, easy like the April rainfall
which cannot help but corrode cars, graveyards, storm
of justice infinite like Greek's chaos and I think
We aren’t Americans yet and damn,
how will I ever make a poem.

11: It's Christopher Smart's Birthday

from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B

[For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry]

....For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

7 came (too) easy via a prompt

Getting at the Really True Number

No water-drinker ever wrote a poem that lasted. –Horace


Our wearisome calculations have
ended the blue ( ) results may
only be farmed by nuns and water-
drinkers ( ) tolerant
in the long dream.
You cultivate indoor plants
we laugh, deathless. Until
the translation, meaning
molested. Hark!
Seventy!



(I used a prompt suggested by Robin at Kelli Russell Agodon's very cool Book of Kells.)

A Break from Our Sponsor

That is, this is a break from me. I want to honor another who is writing a poem a day for this month, only his poem-a-day consists of one (lonely, ebullient, zen) word. Barwin, Gary, whose work I totally dig. I guess I'll eventually add his Serif of Nottingblog to the blog roll, though it doesn't seem fair because is he really working as hard as Robin, Charlie and Ada and those nice grad students at Rutgers?

All's fair in love, war, and art.

Today, his word is ... hmmm, actually, you'll have to check it out.

Thanatology in April

Thanatology

Speaking personally I ask simply that I be sped
to the county morgue in an old gold convertible
Caddy propped against a guitar—the one
I can’t play. Speaking personally I request
that I be donated to arts, not science. Speaking
I ask to be wheeled to the crematorium in a red wagon
yanked by neighborhood tots who haven’t learned
to fear deadness here. I demand the Marseillaise be
sung immediately upon my demise, my tongue snipped
and buried far back in a spot that is no garden, hardly
in nature, my brown body painted blue, my gray dyed,
nails vamp, hands holding a manifesto. Any manifesto.
Except the futurists'! Crazy bastards! Personally I
ask to be firmly lassoed to the Vermont mountainside
and left for wolves’ delectation. Unless they want cake.
But first (first!) get me to the city hospital to be plumped
fat with air, plugged into heart and lung machines so
I'm back just a minute to call my Katie, tell her what
happened and how they all are, there on the other side,
and who I shared a cigarette with, thinking it over, saying
little, little, less, tired of it, tired but finally able.

Yes, cruelest

I'm in.