America is the land
That without irony
Sells both the cigarette
And the nicotine patch.
It was late and the insomniac moon
Played cold music in my ears,
A seashell hum foot-tapping
To the beat of toss-turning dreams.
The night hangs low and shatters treetops
Like a brain bludgeoned against a wall,
Bone obliterated, thought incinerated,
Oozing toward the denuded earth,
And I resist.
Sleepless, restless, hopeless—yes.
Still I resist.
In Vietnam we set the jungle on fire,
The leaves and branches melting like wax,
Candles blown out by blind war
Snuffing out the celebration of life.
I saw the rose bloom in thorns, her petals pierced
And bloody, her scent metallic, her countenance,
Once sanguine, sanguine no more, but pained,
Burned by the sun, depressed by the darkness
That since that horrid November had blotted
Out the moon until even the owls ceased to hoot.
When children by gunfire die,
When the dreamer and the warden clash,
When statues betray the sculptor, we proclaim
This is not who we are.
I write from bed today:
Charlottesville bleeds, bloody hands
That keep hope at bay
With a smoldering gun and smoldering sands
That pierce the breast and burn the feet
Of those who from injustice ne’er retreat.
Suppose I told you that in first half of 2017 Capital Good Fund had experienced a net loss of over $798 million, yet for a brief time our stock was worth more than that of Bank of America, and this despite the fact […]
America was born mulatto, stillborn
But for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
Aphorisms written in blood with hands trembling,
Terrified of the dark engine that drove
The clouds roll in on rails
Freighted with storms headed West,
A great chain of color clanking
Across the sky, a mass of iron