Poem Against the Reagan Administration
 
 

                                         "...a desert of stems without a single rose."
                                                                               -Federico Garcia Lorca
 
 

The financiers of America are eating their children
and under their wings the mad swarm of locusts
are chewing on the sacred texts of the Republic.
The colossal whirlwind of their fury
airlifts the troops towards those distant colonies
where the eyes are blinded
and the rings of mercy
auctioned at the local marketplace of dust.
 

The dictators sleep in the muzzle of a dog
that yelps at the moon,
and take their aim at the night
through the sightglass of treachery and peroxide.
The wires of the international services quiver
with the whispered prayers of nuns raped and shot at gunpoint.
The government spokesmen stumble over the broken shoelace
of land reform,
and the eighty thousand disappeared feet cry out
for their legs that are on the journey
north along the Pan-American highway.
 

The social mask wearies of its lies,
puts the shotgun barrel between the eyes,
and pulls the trigger.
 

The unemployed workers set up their warehouses far underground
stockpiled with high explosives.
But the offshore drilling has yet to tap the resources
of the heart, which is also heavy.
 

And if the earth moans again
under the weight of our hardened silos,
and the disposable bottles of posterity break
too easily beneath her bandaged feet,
find a cot for her to lie down on, boys, but keep her
attention with the tourniquet,
and her bowels on fire
with the blast furnaces of overproduction.
 

Just as the automatic firing squad of the gross national product
sends nettles of rage
through the hearts of everyone who is poor,
And the pots and pans of industry fly off their handles
to assault the midwife in her duties,
And the immensity of the armored vehicles of despair
can only be measured using the serrated yardstick of logic
that cuts men's hopes in half like a ribbon
and fills them again with sand,
So too the price of gold on the commodity market
has ears only for the noisy teeth of the dead,
molar teeth of the rabid technology
that grinds us down daily
into the fine powder of valium and cocaine.
 

The nation of stern fathers
throws up its hands in exasperation.
The nation of stern fathers
ties the weight around its neck.
The nation of stern fathers
throws itself overboard.
 

And the speed of the vortex that spins us around and
around without hope of executive clemency.
 
 
 
 
 
 

At a Rally in Washington Against the Draft

                                            March 22, 1980
 
 

The grass is not yet green beneath
our feet: it is
a large self-addressed manila envelope
we carry in our coat pockets
 

There is a word written somewhere inside
 

The word moves out, fans its wings
and ascend
into the sea of blue
 

That is the one painted white by Picasso
 

The wings in flight do not weigh
upon the damp earth
We shake out their vast darkness
and hurry on toward spring
We march....
 

Strange metallic other birds darken the skies
over Central America
At the State Department, men asleep at their desks
          waken,
screaming they had no choice in the matter
Whole nations are about to be lifted
off the face of the earth
 

Beneath America's steel mask
wild eyes look about,
 

and without tears
 
 
 
 
 
 

CONTENTS
 

The Day After    page 1
Poem Against the Reagan Administration    page 2
At a Rally in Washington Against the Draft    page 2
America Revisited    page 3
Poems for a Small Place to Rest    page 4   page 5   page 6
What He Would Not Tell Him    page 7
Waking Poem    page 7
Moon    page 7
Laborers    page 7
Spring 1980    page 7
Lebanon 1982    page 8
As the Latin American War Approaches    page 8
Poem for Immediate Disarmament    page 8
To Whom It May Concern    page 9
Song of the Little Girl    page 10
 
 

to the collection The Book of Awakenings