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Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The bricks ripple as I ride across them
Each time on my way to campus to collect
Your latest package of junk mail and recipes.
Or the diffuse church bells that sound every evening
At exactly five past six as I eat
And prepare for the problem sets ahead...
It didn't have to come to this.
Every so often, I take out the pictures I took
The last time I went camping with them, up north.
Every time I see the same smiling familiar faces
And since there will be no more pictures
I take out the empty spots to look at them, too.
Nobody writes the dead.
Why cant we be happy, you and I?
Why must happy people fear that we will spit poison at them?
Why do happy people cry on the telephone after seeing happy parents
put their arms around their happy children at the hall? Why do happy people
fear the world, and each other, and we who have left? Why cant happy people live
true, ly live free?
I am burnt up in icy balls
that tear at me
when I am
trying
to get
you
out w/o
destroying
you/
or else forget
you.
Trying
to understand
how
cleverer
than
most/
Wiser
did not mean a thing to
you
when I
left
& did they
ever
mean anything
before?
I wd do
anything
for
you
to see
why
your future
kicked up something
deep in me
that
terrified me
& left me
floating
falling
furiously fast
out of a
mistake
into the open air
w/o
you.
The truth is lies unless it is
shouting out "devil worship" when you come knocking at the door
and burning your watchtowers into unleavened thrift-store ash
for the potluck celebration of Tamuz and her
mandatory blood transfusions.
Make a toast: to the fall of the bORG
and to all who fell by it.
And happy Valentine's Day.
As the wise man say:
"The Watchtower Society and the Creed of the Jehovah's Witnesses is a
CHEAT, a SHAM, a DECEITFUL TRICK, a FILTHY LIE, a BLASPHEMOUS INSULT, a SCANDAL, a FRAUD, a DISGRACE, an ABOMINATION and a DAMNED OUTRAGE from start to finish."
So focus:
We want an apostate truth. And an
Apostate World.
Let the world be an apostate from you
And Let All Apostates Speak This Truth
Silently (for fear of you)
or LOUD.
* * *
And there you are...
Wasting lives on a summer afternoon
the children complaining that they dont want to do another door
because it's hot out. Maybe there will be a sprinkler at the next house
but they skip that one 'cause that's where the 'postate lives, dont you see?
Cant you hear him laughing as we scuttle past the house like mice, fearing his
rat 'postate humor.
The old ideas crumble, the generation quietly dies and we are left with all of the form and none of the fire.
Somewhere, someone's child is fed to the wolves over a dinner, but it won't be the 'postate.
There's 'postate thinking everywhere. The people open up their paper looking for news
about the nearness of the end and read about the man in Kentucky who resigned.
The speaker drones on in monotone for fifteen minutes about how to buy convention parking tickets
and everyone would be staring out the windows, if there were any.
The parking lot will soon be empty after the hall disgorges the last brothers who stand around to talk
to show how spiritually strong they are
and safe from the 'postates... except a close look at the presiding overseer's face will set you
wondering if maybe they got him, too. Even there in paradise.
And last night, as I fell asleep
to the insistent sound of rain,
I wondered if I would ever catch you
Quietly, when you think no one could see
Peering into your own tight clasped truths.
-- The Tergiversator, 14 February 2001
A note on style: this poem imitates 6 or so different poems by the poet Amiri Baraka; the title and first few stanzas play off of his poem Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. His subject matter was a bit different, and I apologize to anyone who feels this reworking is inappropriate. But they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...
And a special thanks to the posters at H2O, from whom I shamelessly stole a few ideas and phrases.