The Heartbeat of a Nation

 

This page was blank

for a long time,

staring back at me with

the same anxiety

I stared at it with.

Blank Anxiety.

 

A dreadful anxiety,

gnawing at the corners

of my well-being,

trepidation and

tepidness,

of anticipation.

 

I know why of course.

It’s not a mystery,

where this concern

dwells; it’s in Atlanta,

on a Newsroom

TV stage.

 

The culmination of

years of dialogue;

speeches, monologues,

summations, defenses,

accusations, comments,

off-the-cuff witticisms.

 

All on display in

blaring anxious colors,

flickering on TV’s,

as I nail-bite and pace,

with each debatable

disappointment.

 

The animal of politics

is vicious and ferocious,

blood thirsty and venomous,

but enjoys being pet and

cuddled, told it’s “Good”,

while people go hungry and wars wage.

 

This page was blank for

a long while, as I sorted my

anxieties, so I understand,

why the page might be looking

back at me, with anxiety.  

Suspicion, even.

Faith

 

I have faith in

soft, sweet kisses,

from a lover.

 

I have faith in the

embrace of loved

ones.

 

I have faith

that things tend

to work out.

 

I have faith that

people usually do

the right thing.

 

I have faith in

the beliefs that

sustain me, and only me.

 

I have no faith

in forcing your Faith

on anyone.

 

Looking at you

Louisiana.

 

Shame.

Shame.

Shame.

 

I have Faith your

shame will outlive

your intentions.

 

Which pave the Road

to Hell,

coincidentally.

 

Or, is it coincidence?

 

 

 

  

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Sculpture-Leap-of-Faith/867675/2903216/view

Eulogy for a Crab Cake

 

She really wanted those

crab cakes.

She made a special trip

to the store and brought

them home with an excited

grin happily spread across

her face.

 

She was deliberate in

her joyful anticipation

for those crab cakes and

described their delicious

contents, seasonings and

flavor profile with glee.

 

She could hardly wait

to eat them, to go with

the special Salmon

she’d also happily bought

for a lovely dinner she

had planned.

 

It had been a while

since she had been able

to make a full, fun, special

dinner for us since the operations,

and minor medical setbacks and all, so

she was eager to make

something.

 

I was happy she was happy

to make this meal, so I stepped

away as she started prepping

and sorting and getting things

in their proper dishes and into

the oven and air fryer.

The kitchen happy and warm.

 

An opportunity to take out

the trash perhaps,

I left the kitchen and

stepped outside, through the yard,

past the gate, to the alley, and

disposed of the disposable.

 

I turned from the gate,

only to hear, a painful wail

and scream through the open

kitchen window.

I latched the gate quickly and

ran up toward the backdoor and

flung it open, and crossed

the back porch and into the kitchen,

where I found her, crying and clutching

her stomach.

 

The small dish containing the

now well heated crab cakes

was flipped over on the floor,

the crab cakes themselves,

a smushed mess of crab and

cake, still steaming from the oven,

now, rendered inedible.

 

She cried as she explained through

her tears how she tripped on her

flip-flop sandal, and almost fell, but

dropped the much-desired crab cakes,

and also how she pulled something in

her stomach, near a most recent site

of medical procedures.

 

I got her to the couch,

as she continued to cry,

about the lost crab cakes,

now ruined on the floor,

how she wanted to make a nice

dinner for us and now, because she’s

clumsy, had ruined it all.

 

I hushed her and calmed her

down, explaining that as long as

she was okay, the crab cakes could

go to hell, there’d be other crab cakes,

other dinners to have.

I blamed the flip-flops for all the trouble,

and will likely ban them in the future.

 

I cleaned up the lost crab cakes,

lamenting for the wholly crushed

enthusiasm of my girlfriend,

who really wanted them. 

Her sadness made me

love her more.

  

Her passion and enthusiasm

for crab cakes, and her profound sadness

at their destruction,

made me appreciate how much she

cares for me too.

A human crab cake, for

her to love.

 

I brought her an ice pack,

and placed it on her belly,

as she wiped her tears,

I told her I love her,

and that everything would be

alright.

 

And I believe it.

 

 

Something About the Weather

 

Poetry writing

is kind of like a lover,

who is suspicious,

about the weather.

All the time,

always looking skyward.

 

An eye for the sky,

the darkest tinge on the

edges of the clouds,

always perplexed by the next

breeze blowing, hot or cold.

 

Will it rain?

Will it be partly cloudy

in Cleveland today?

Will a Rainbow arch

across the gray sky?

Will lightning strike?

Will the Sun warm my face?

 

This lover,

this poem,

wandering all over the page,

concerned for the temperature,

the humidity, for the storms

in the readers eye.

 

I’ve erased about 17 different

version of this very poem

with thunderous aplomb.

Unstruck by lightning,

the Sunny grace of language or

the peach-colored magical words of

sunset over a snowy valley evades me.  

 

A lover meandering,

in a storm,

all over the page,

a lover in too many embraces,

too many ports,

too many musings about weather.

 

Of which I am suspicious.

 

 

We Do The Math

 

The arithmetic of atrocities,

who does that math,

counting lives like

piles of cordwood destined

for the funeral fire.

 

Are atrocities algebraic,

x plus y plus Time equals

a mathematical formula

for the horror and traumas

we have inflicted.

 

Do we count with our fingers,

with our toes,

with an abacus,

slide ruler,

calculator or computer?

 

Math is the constant,

counting the rolling heads,

the bodies buried under

heaps of other dead bodies,

neatly accounted for.

 

For History needs its numbers,

to show who won,

who lost,

the cost,

the wages of sin.

 

The ridged, cold

numbers; orderly and

succinct, filed and

stamped, in long

symmetrical rows of carnage.

 

We can put a price on it,

a number can be affixed,

we know how to do it,

we’re practiced

and very good at math.

 

We do the Math.

 

Sepia Tones

 

Is it wrong to fantasize

about the mundane,

the boring stillness of

absolute nothingness,

amid the swirling madness

of reality?

 

I don’t think so.

Especially when madness

seems commonplace and

stillness and calmness are

the foreigners in a strange

land.

 

I long for beige,

manilla,

khaki,

sepia;

away from the burning Reds and Blues

in constant flashing neon.

 

With age comes an appreciation

for the slowness of things,

glacial movement being profoundly

more interesting than sudden changes

in direction and course.

Look

at

that

paint

dry…

 

I do like the occasional

fireworks display, in the distance,

the explosions so distant they are

merely popping sounds, but

up close; I’m frayed to my last.

The rumble is an arrogance of sound

I can no longer tolerate.

 

Calmness absent mediocrity,

Stillness absent rage,

Passion absent jealousy,

Nothingness absent vacancy.

Space, empty,

containing multitudes.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo Credit: https://www.saatchiart.com/print/Photography-Route-66-Grants-Cafe-Neon-2012-Sepia/888771/3051890/view 

Another Moment on the Soapbox

 

                Hey, would you lend me your soapbox for a moment? Thanks.

 

I just read an article that made my blood curdle and my eyes tear up. A Virginia schoolboard voted to restore Confederate names to two schools. The schools had been previously named after Confederate Gens. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby. They were changed four years ago in what I feel was an appropriate vote to remove the vestiges of the Old South and the history of racism and segregation. 

                Now they have voted to change Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School back to their former Confederate names. Because it’s 2024 and the history of the South should not be forgotten, apparently. Proponents of the plan to restore the names stated, “I ask that when you cast your vote, you remember that Stonewall Jackson and others fighting on the side of the Confederacy in this area were intent on protecting the land, the buildings and the lives of those under attack,” said a woman urging the board to restore the Confederate names. “Preservation is the focus of those wishing to restore the names.”  And “that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority.” 

                Which is the stupidest pile of crap I have ever heard. The Confederacy lost the war. They were traitors to the Republic and Democracy. Losers don’t get buildings named after them. They belong in the history books as the losers of the war and that is it. There was no honor in their cause. It was to keep slavery as an American institution. Which is an absolute moral wrong. Without question. The bondage of humans by other humans is abhorrent and vile and we should not honor those that wanted to sustain that institution. 

                The Lost Cause narrative espoused by the Daughters of the Confederacy in the early 20^th Century is absolute nonsense and any “honorarium” for traitors should be resoundingly rejected. The romanticism of the Civil War by Southern revisionists should be absolutely rejected.  It was wrong then and it is wrong in the 21^st Century. 

                Yet, I’m not surprised by this disgusting move by the “majority” in Virginia. It fits part and parcel with the current wave of nostalgia politics. This strange yearning to go backwards in time to remove women’s rights, return to segregation, expel those different than White Christians and basically a want for days when white men could do whatever they wanted with impunity. It’s a baffling trend in this country and frankly if you believe any of those things are good, then quite frankly, you’re an asshole who should be shunned and set adrift on an iceberg. While on fire. 

                The worst kind of asshole too, pockmarked, and oozing smelly puss, while smeared with diarrhea.  The worst of the worst of the very and absolute worst. That Grinch song, it’s about you. I’d rather you just curled up into a festering pile of dog shit and fucked right off. Because if you think you’re better than anyone, or think the Country was better in the 1950’s, or your rights as an American supersede the rights of other human beings, then you can just go to hell.   

                I’m really exhausted by these assholes and their “All for me and none for thee”, attitudes. I can’t contain my absolute disdain for them. I can no longer try to see the other side of the conversation. Any side that actively advocates for the Lost Cause, White Christian Nationalism, the politics of division, or that sews hatred, bigotry, and nostalgic whimpering for the “good old days” can just go fuck themselves. I won’t waste any more time on them. 

                Okay, here’s your soapbox back. Thank you for letting me borrow it.

 

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/us/shenandoah-county-confederate-school-names-reaj/index.html