Michael Daley-Site
WAR CRIMES
“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while
then a layer of scum floats to the top.”—Edward Abbey
The Senator was protecting, like a she-bear,
that revered Dr. K., whose damned body,
well past ninety and rotting in his slippers,
shuffled into the Senate to advise a subcommittee
underwhelmed by chanting protesters —
a Greek tragedy, his body wheeled in
from a movie set—Dr. Strangelove.
The Chorus chanted names of countries
where Henry’s legacy arose, where
countless human animals boiled in
or fled our poisons, our strafing,
boots we crept in to make them safe.
When they chanted the name, “Vietnam,”
the Senator cried out. Once I had assumed
he spoke with my own heart.
I lied to myself that he knew the city streets,
could have been my classmate,
might have walked the old neighborhood,
struggled with us, knew what work is.
I blinded myself to his history of privilege.
He’d been chained to a wall in the prison hut,
so why bow to this war criminal,
frail seer led to testify before Creon
while the Chorus in pink was ushered offstage?
They may have felt it savage, compassionless,
to hiss at the defender of détente, intervention,
hemisphere hegemony, and overthrow—once,
the brain of Nixon, our blood line to the Hapsburgs.
When the Senator spewed his regal curse,
no one spoke. Protestors had defiled his hall,
calm proceedings gave him meaning,
an imagined hurt to Henry was a breach.
But the Senator hurt me, ratted my trust.
Not by sicking his slick and frothing dogs
to slime the staircase, but he whipped me
with my own guilt, that beautiful
inward machine. Pop indoctrination
and other Media distractions halted, even
the Prisoner of War unmasked as drone
of the dictator class, outraged, was silenced
for the moment, and those clowns, the Chorus
whispered: “War Crime War Crime War Crime.”
Picture her swept into the arms of the suited guard,
the Code Pink girl who rushes Henry
shaking like Voodoo her shiny handcuffs,
the nauseated wife behind Schultz
flanked by two daughters in a trance—
the girl shoved away, pumps above the wreckage
of Kissinger her scrawled sign: “Cambodia,”
the Senator cursing her, cursing all of us
dredges up from his own inmost filth:
“Get out of here, you low-life scum.”
FROM OF THE FEATHER
*
Across the
lake in the darkness
is a light
where a man sits at a table
eating a
breakfast of oatmeal
and writing
his first poem of the day.
When he looks
into darkness
he knows the
giant cedar is out there,
and the
lake—last night a tub of dull moon—
hasn’t dried
up, or changed
in any way
apparent or important.
He sees one
light, only this one,
where someone
at a kitchen table
(with
oatmeal, and scribbling)
doesn’t
trouble what lies
in the dark between us.
WRITE YOUR POEM!
From Michael's last poem we question the role of the poet. When he writes in the third person the reader is forced to sit at the table next to him and watch him scribble his poem. So it begs questions. What is the color of Michael's shirt? When you sit the reader down at the breakfast table in prose lines they start to look around the room and wonder. Is Michael's oatmeal instant? Does he use Folger's coffee, like your grandmother, or Starbuck's blend?
In the end, does your poem make you the lead singer of an 80's power ballad? Does your voice carry the poem or is it the images that carry the poem? Michael has put us in the middle of that question but like all master poets he ultimately points us back to the words. The last line makes us forget that we don't care that he might wear a green, plaid Pendleton shirt with his DeKalb baseball cap tilted just a bit so he can concentrate.....write your poem.
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