At the emasculation:
In smooth leather chairs,
smelling of power and
must,
at rectangular dark polished desks
feeling fluid squared and easy
walls covered with appropriate beauty
floors invisibly well cleaned,
in every board room of every corporation and
bank in every corner that edges the spiral of history
and the circular globe, everywhere,
feeling pinprick fears of the verge of war,
the officers sit in filial duty to their stockholder,
the market,
rub Mount Blank pens, the instruments of all that
may be
inherited,
and wonder,
at their singular crossroads
What shall be the best mounting-point
to pluck the most return for
me,
in the name of my family,
in the name of my company,
in the name
of the nation,
for my race,
as so impaled
are they that the impalers appear
as others
Elsewhere,
Pulled by the darkness of the
shadows’ light, the social worker trembled
and looked for a better retirement plan as the
clients had vanished
some time ago, what did happen to them
there were so many, breeding
and the construction worker scrutinized his union
card
to make sure that no one else could get it,
while the auto worker on every Camaro line hoped
he
could soon
build tanks,
the union president looked to his industry and
his craft and his time off the
metronome real job
and doing solidarity with
dues, the spray of
monotony
tedium,
liquidated creativity
and the good old rank and file,
and became a patriot, for his industry, for his craft,
for his nation, and his race
away from the tedium,
away from the horror,
away from the line,
in the creativity of captivity
for his family and children, the inheritance
The Judge and the Prosecutor,the
Renowned Defense Team
Blind Justice compensated
stood puzzled over the unshakeable witness
unflappable, undeterred
as each scratched for beginnings
to discover negations
forgetting that the perfect witness,
so crisply certain,
never saw the event and never was near
but was well-prepped and perfectly clear
The ballplayer and pit boss shuddered as
one
against the odds of good fortune
as the crack of the bat, the spin of the wheel,
the glance at the rube,
sucker gaping
at an odd moment seemed
lonely
the steelworker Japan looked in alarm at the
steelworker USA, where the gaze
reoccurred, as each labored in mortal fear of the
hot product
that worked them
The professor, detached,
mind and body, would not be distracted
and worked on the book to frame the career
that stood above the moment, which each notion chases,
felt the quake and went stiff, yet unaltered
eye froze, ear deaf,
then back to the droll
but missed the deadline
for mind outside body is a temple of fear,
The teacher knew at once
what is true: habit;
and forgot in truth wonder,
marched with the kiddies,
once born lie-spotters,
row upon row
to nation and answers
past the processes
the questions
that cause some to know
The spy buried deep
analyzed the foe
could predict every maneuver
and the indulgences far below
sex, money, drugs, greed, hubris,
the weak openings
that make traitors grow,
but the spy soon learned the great peril
was not the evil
he knew so well
but in his center, his runner, holder of the leash
who might
would must send a spy, unwitting,
to horrors untold
The elected official swore once again
Loyalty to constituents and nation and
legal-formal with all the right arrangements
if not informal evidence
of procreation
and stood in fevered applause when the opposition
leader announced the Grand Strategy
and then returned to the office to
burn that midnight oil, the dark handout
that gave him life and vision
as the face on money
planning to step up when a tactic crashed
Every Officer reviewed every soldier
mindful cunning of war
We cannot tell you where you will go
but when you get there you will be surrounded by
Hostiles; You must take care of your Buddies or
you will die,
the last war cry;
the soldier peered deep into the
barrel of his gun
compass lost
nowhere to run
The Officer joined his Confederates
to build high walls around their
tents
The traditional Big Unfathomable
the head of the alter
Incarnate drape-gold,
robed in the surplus
of the real rupture
of what is known
and what is not yet,
methodically punctual to bestow
two dollars to the same homeless man everyday,
saw the parishioners parade bedazzled in good order,
agape at the local torture symbol,
saw the collection in dues for their faith
in what must not be penetrated
and felt the holy warmth of being on the
wrong payroll
He called down the wrath
and lovingly swore with devotion,
not vengeance, a sure win
one way or the other, as his way
above all
The patriot patriarch
head–of-table maestro
with boxed love
gathered the blood very near
if all still beneath
and whispered assurance
but added
don’t touch that
The radical winced at the robe of gold
and condemned the False Unfathomable
exposed the union hack
recoiled at the greedy casino dealer
ricocheted against the spy
denounced the drone teacher,
the impotent Dad,
wretched at the machine, the market,
and the horrors of dull work for the Empire
that made all one—or two,
as dazed as a worshiper he screamed opposition
to yesterday
for his world as well
and in it he lived
was made in his mind,
forgot his fingers
that might turn the page
to see the
love of the
slave
While the oilworker
un-raping soil, water, fossils, all of love
science and knowledge meeting the history of nature
with his fellows’
Acts: Four and more, Four for
one or all?
The painters and drummers
saw madness afoot
in sound and light
inched and pounded into the gaps
of one from the other,
all at all to
all
others, sure enough, sent money
and planned the War Tour
And in every nation in less tidy homes
where mothers and fathers and grandma and granpa
must
work to eat
the ghettoized citizens peer out to
the boarders
where mirrors cloud the view
and glittering the eyes of those
who struggle with noise
and cannot own time,
or buy better looks
and
send their children to drudge relentlessly, in schools
and in plants,
in homes where the musk of desire
meets the demands of the day
those mothers wonder,
shall my child, that of me beyond me,
that of me that is us,
shall this one be one, or may we be we
in the name of our nation, in the name of our race
read beneath
that embalmed desire
that stenching veil
over the must-smell of the
boardroom,
within the beauty of the flag
in the color of the race
Yet the pencils moms held
to keep track of need
that hold they must to grasp the day,
those products of nature and minds
monotony shrouding solidarity
those pencils they trace,
the root out,
that love and those pencils,
the little products of misery,
And nature of life,
That and coupled loins
worked relentlessly
overcoming.
Beyond incense
and market
a post-singular swarm
rising
of wise minds, from work-
knowledge- love
rising up toward the after-here
but surely here
the as yet unseen
from commitment to need
that none could have known