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[Bill Dodd`s new book IN OCTOBER BEFORE THE WAR is now available from Publish America (www.PublishAmerica.com). Poems by Bill Dodd
that is Amerika
(Kafkaesque piety
(the taggers rag and rage ‘gainst Manifest Destiny
(the white man’s burden is also his pie— let’s have ‘ole history reinvestigate our crimes— how the flappers got from Plymouth’s nothing(ness to a Market stake, Long Island manse, the lamé dress
‘jes ask the Iroquois
West Africans
now settled in as duopoly
coined, methinks, by Nader
un-bigoted, but highly racist white man’s, again, coalescence; an allegiance (outside the Senators’ campaigns for a libertarian, entreprenuerial Algerian, H., vision of nation (where reality is implacable, multi-national corporate bodies
a prison enormity to house the inevitable detritus unable to adapt to white-collar criminality on which the corpulent middle of America turns
Consequently, both “parties are now linked globally in a unified effort to turn any perceived advantage there/ to our self-interest
backdropped by a monstrous military which obscene funding has created into an arterial behemoth on not only our “culture but the world
:a set piece— implacable and unyielding
It seems a tiny voice, ever receding (like the cosmos that once warned against a “military-industrial complex
Done
Observe the frantic behavior in the affected communities faced with possible base closings: which, in fact, will be expanded
If one is born outside the 1% that controls everything— wealth— and cannot lie, cheat and steal upwardly mobile, then one is normally doomed to a marginal existence, they hope committed to an abiding servitude to either God or His social agenda, i.e., abortion, gay or gun rights, etc
Heaven help you if you are attempting to look behind the curtain of this “democratic illusion to the system’s parameters, to a new day or a new way
which will come
If 9/11 had been as extensive as originally planned (so they’ve said
we’d have found ourselves in a major economic depression
That’s how fragile the system really is beyond those tales told for fools about the anchorages of our ‘democracy’
so seriously fradulent as Florida proved
We are warned— by way of rationale— about citizens’ ‘gaming,’ say, the bankruptcy laws
yet the whole apparatus— from Orwellian advertising to preferential government conduct and contracting— is based on the same thing
(the good ‘ole boy network, one is reminded
ii.
It is easy to speculate, hard to know the exact moment
chain of events (the scenario that will lead to America as a second- or third-rate nation
(something in the water: once fresh and plentiful, gone bad
(abandonment of our great- ly celebrated national Ethic
:the will to do good; to be good; at least, to be better
(that pulling for the little guy, the down-and-outer
now literally left destitute to die in the street
or imprisoned; forgotten
Perhaps the Asians will call in all our paper they’ve bought up; the dollar tumbles; the soup lines are reconstituted
even a decline in military spending
another 9/11, of sorts, this one full-throated
social malaise will descend; the wrath of God; a Judgement
or could be construed as
the cities collapse in chaos
subsistence farming saves itself
power grids falter, fail
and perhaps most telling
the Big Mac falls to a dime
Of course the elite, long ago converted to the Euro, and to gold, escape to the Riviera
The Left, and their possibilies for change
hesitate, then collapse
as it is left in name only with the entanglements of White Flight and Black culture, the gas engine, the aforesaid power grids to continue on towards their ultimate implosion
(the educational system on the rocks: as, indeed, it is already
the Liberal Arts D.O.A. as minimalist manifestations to cultural, social and economic woes writ large
Perhaps it will neither be more traumatic nor appalling than the current status quo
if perchance
(ice water in hell?
the “public awakes and squarely takes on the issue of social justice for all in a way it has never before shown the slightest inclination or aptitude to do so
The most likely trip is a radically two-tiered culture (rich/poor
closely monitored by a military poised to intervene to preserve the dead image of a c. l950 mainly middle-class and happy folk sucking suds, riding Studebakers
(something like that
only not that
gone and barely grieved by the descendents of Phillip-Morris, Wm. Penn; born-slaves
There will be Hell to pay
and will most likely be paid in jackboots
where most democracies have fled
that hell of inhuman regimentation and forced dedication to a blind state, gone dumb
The savage, blonde Vikings
intent on invasion
(violence supreme in their world view
drove their longboats towards the English isles
setting in motion a chain of similar adventurism, the Crusades— their dirty hair under the skullcaps of armor as they invaded (with mixed results the peaceable—relatively—caliphates of ancient Arabia
A thousand years later, one Geo. W. Bush, legatee to many shallow things, but the humanist doctrine of Christianity, as well, and a braintrust of fools, plot another foray there: Iraq, led by our at one-time handpicked surrogate, Saddam Hussein, whose microcosm, governed by pragmatic utililarianism, has rescued a secular and wholly functional society from the patchwork state cobbled together by those selfsame English, regardless the geometric macrocosm of his Islamic heritage, fifty years earlier
So, you, mon lecteur, you decide the justice of our having hanged the man for his crimes “against the Iraqi people
You judge whether or not we justly deposed Saddam, our handpicked enfant terrible during his exiled sojourn in Egypt, under sponsorship of the CIA; for having taken our WMD during his war with Iran; for having misconstrued our ambivalent response to his feelers on a proposed invasion of Kuwait?
If one is to judge by the relative results of the two regimes, his and ours, our folly, as well as the folly of the Crusades, is abundant and saddening: where there was order, chaos reigns
2.
“The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe, and they call the wind Maria
as I turn to a song’s pastoral lyrics and its cardinal energies
away from the planetary-wide buzz they hanged the wrong Iraq war criminal today
(even the NY Times intuits the truth while demurring from any direct indictment
It is a sad truth: we are the barbarians as an accurately rendered history will one day testify
Per sd to M (before the breakers on the beach “What perfect scrollwork
but thinking, “the raging sea
Mother of life/ the trilobite trail through the sand
She comes to my door in the desert, an American Gothic woman figure with a miniaturized copy of Watchtower for me from her clutch
Perhaps death does retreat before her; but this is illusory as it is everywhere
While there is no ShiningCity, the mountains here do glow golden in the eve’light
(the years are brief, and never to the point
It is positively Mediaeval, the way we’ve sacked Baghdad
This has been the first (fully-scale, anyway Pre-emptive War we’ve declared
That is: a war of naked aggression
and now, to have executed Saddam (and one can clearly see the hands of Bush’s “Braintrust behind the insistence to execute our chosen tool
a Strongman, who did, in fact, hold Iraq together
during whose tenure the Iraqis for the most part enjoyed a high standard of living
yielding, finally, to the efforts of Clinton and George W.
The execution is simply appalling as it is all about our barbarity
This comes as CNN of our tabloid news media announces a retrospective of Saddam’s life
One wonders if it will include our blatant culpability in bringing him to power
and keeping him there?
Who, one vainly inquires, are these shadows less than shades that lead the nation?
and a Congress of sheep? a media of wolves?
3.
We are in uncharted territory; with a blind man at our helm
What will be the cost to our country? To the world?
Maybe we will just have had enough of the violence and loss—much as did the Crusades quickly evolving into the sentimental romanticism of the Age of Chivalry—replacing the bloody with the symbolic ; It is perhaps an unfortunate truth the American consumer is nearly indefatigable, and the North American Continent is large enough to contain many body blows against it
Still, no one knows what a truly precipitous decline in the dollar might bring—coupled with the incredible surge in gas prices that will certainly result should Bush & Co. bomb Iran
Saddam is dead; the autocrat, the Strongman
another DOA logged into W’s book together with the hundreds whose extermination he presided over as Guvenor of Texas; all those 2999 (today) American soldiers dead in Iraq; those countless Iraqis
their cultural decimation; the almost completed flatlining of their infrastructure
George Bush was a bus Saddam didn’t see coming; He is the price all of us have paid for his Supreme Court appointment as President
All those excitably neurotic Republican youth corps who pitched such a scream down in Florida in 2000 are (rightfully hiding out in D.C. these days
:and we perhaps thought Clinton’s antics were high drama
They were as nothing
Those who have never read their history are doomed to repeat it
There was a time in America when…
(a prologue which, naturally, starts the patriotic juices flowing
Well, of course, there never was any such “then or its implicit zen
except the vanity of white supremacy (usually paternalistic
a rancher standing on his Montana porch looking into forever uninterrupted by ubiquitous power lines or dreaded fences
(a colorless portraiture despite following hard on the heels of the Civil War horrors
and belies the fact his Native enemies were all placated, i.e., liquidated
then, again, he can’t quite see all the way to Butte
where, if he could, he would witness the net results of the magnates of his time
(parenthetically, the Gilded Age
forever torturing the earth with wastes of their copper mongering
recalling, as well, his little missus in the kitchen
her lips effectively sealed against opportuning for herself
except to suck up what comfort she could from her Coca-Cola imported from Atlanta
when “Coke” really stood for something
It is little better at my place on earth
presumably years later
incidentally in the great Southwest
with the Santa Rita pit nearby (heir to Butte and Anaconda
large as a Martian crater and twice as venomous
and north they’ve packed the Manzanos surrounding Albuquerque with 2K nuclear warheads
farther on, the humanity-damning atomic labs of Los Alamos
Still, we wave the flag, saluting smartly, lacking but one vote (this time around to make it a felony to deface the thing
Whereas, our most vociferous patriotism is bottled in bond
or the Constitution which the major parties honor only in the breech
excoriating it in all their legislative effrontery
(a great barrel of pork for the privileged
(and the military’s heart’s desire
I would leave but the post-Columbian stranglehold in S. America has left such scars it’s hard to know where to go
It’ll be another half-millenium before there’s hope of progress and perhaps forgiveness for the white-eyes’ misanthropy
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Big Ben no longer even goes to the window
(all the native fish are poisoned, and the deer chronically wasting
If he looks at all, it’s at television, telling him nothing And Maggie’s a little frightened at complete freedom, fearing most, evolution in the schools
and the absurdity she knows too well
will relegate God to a kind of low-grade cracker-barrel theology the children will ignore as completely as they now ignore Christian teaching
While she believes it’s true enough, she’s afraid it’s so informal it’ll replace the church
where she and Ben, for whatever else it’s worth, were married
a kind of parallel universe, when they were young, and unthinking; and definitely a two-edged sword
still, welcome as alternative to all the pap of popular culture
(and denatured Coke
but somehow sad; the same for all the clergy who had counted on their ranch and holdings
and, alas, she feels everything’s awry as Butte’s entirely gone to random tourists and a random universe in some existential purge
(of which she’s most afeared
She’s read the French and realizes it’s one thing to eat well, but quite another to digest
in a sly allusion to Rimbaud
For Butte, thus written off, the “smart” money is buying-up summer homes rearing their families— completely lost
It’s in the water, which is not the water of life
and the food, not the wholesome bunkhouse board, nor Maggie’s food for the soul
(“Slowly the poison the whole bloodstream fills
But one need not re-explain life; she thinks | ||