THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING
(Chicago, August 1968;
Washington DC, January 20, 2005)


How simple the world of that past forgiven
when marching through Georgia or dancing
from the highest mountain made life true.

I watched the thousands evaporate with slight
peculiar motions. In Phoenix Park the air stopped
outside the classic hotel the streets were broken
with sighs and the air filtered with grass lisped
into a dangerous melodrama as compared
to buildings collapsing and jumpers leaping
from fire and roof while we pray for relief
by dangling our hands in pools of daily blood.

How innocent we line up behind the Gestapo
like State Police along Constitution Avenue
on Inauguration Day. Sharp uniforms and plush
buttons pushed as lapel tacks signal pure
and not as pure. Has anyone asked why?

Have we lived so dirty that we need storm
troopers in ordinary space for darker nouns
as we assemble we become petrified wood
as words that faulty liar of a speech prepared
like a Hollywood film with as many production
assistants as a 20 minute porno loop bedazzled.

Commentators monitor for each other
minimizing the substance of 20 new coffins
shipped home from this day from Iraq
by way of the President elected to protect
indulgence as a sacrifice and sacrament.

Can death be made so lucrative that we fold
up our tents after the speech and make certain
that paper signs signifying protest are held
up only so far for the multitudes to read?
How we lie as political nouns and verbs
disappear to be replaced by articles of faith
and the promise by the President that he
will return to Texas eight years later.

So much is old in photographs taken
by news hounds and DW Griffith. Does
”Birth of a Nation” recede like linear perspective?

Does it reappear never having actually vanished
in the unknown algebra of our invisible universe
where dark matter waits at the edge of the visible.

If we cannot measure the nature and principles
of dark matter how can go to war in Iraq for lies
repeated as truth no matter how grievous
the loss on World Street New York
where the buildings taken down
by madmen gave birth to that
anti-nation led into slavery by grief
and guilt and the misery of witness.




XXX