THE END OF INNOCENCE Listening to Henley’s – Heart of the Matter

Just when you think you’re ‘grown’ – Oh no, honey. That never-ending day? Just beginning

You don’t see the Heart of the Matter 
Until bits of flesh and brain matter come at you
Flying with force spraying red onto the porch  and the
Window glass of the passenger’s side

We draw our curtains –  to watch the trial
As the beast, powered by fear – goes dark
Returning in a suit and tie – explaining itself to
White juries – Some will empathize

 As science explains quickening heartrates
The Battle Royale; An amygdala punching its way to gold
Destroying its prefrontal cortex

Science will explain ‘early trauma’ choking up
What resembles pity for the perp
Whose name we know

Not the victims’ though. They die twice
Getting lost as we scatter
The holy water of good intentions 
Over the mass graves
Of forgotten identities

Forgotten answers
Emotional forensics
Why we fear? Why we hate?
Why we act? Why we don’t?

We fail every day that
We don’t eradicate what kills us
With every bullet
With every dollar rise in
A murderous stock pumped up
In ability to kill and enrich at once

The mass murder of  hope suspiciously
Triggered by happy believers
Those with thoughts and prayers  
Like casket wreaths
Obscuring the many
Hearts that matter         

THE UNBEARABLE EXCITEMENT OF BEING

They’re there every morning – the ones you don’t
Want to be


And before the sun reaches its crest
Something has sprung
Morbid and murderous
From an angry breast

No cure.
We’ve buried the key
In tangled banks
No antidote for certainty
We’re at the interstices
Life Vs. extinction

Trapped and sordid
Beings fighting
Pleasuring ourselves
In tears and blood

They’re  there every morning – the ones you don’t 

Want to be 

And before the sun reaches its crest 

Something has sprung

Morbid and murderous 

From an angry breast 

No cure. 

We’ve buried the key

In tangled banks

No antidote for certainty

We’re here at the interstices 

Of life and extinction 

Trapped and sordid 

Beings fighting.  

Pleasuring ourselves 

In tears and bloodThey’re  there every morning – the ones you don’t 

Want to be 

And before the sun reaches its crest 

Something has sprung

Morbid and murderous 

From an angry breast
 

No cure. 

We’ve buried the key

In tangled banks

No antidote for certainty


At the interstices 

Life Vs. extinction 

Trapped and sordid 

Beings fighting


Pleasuring ourselves 

In tears and blood

LAND

Land is language

 Flowers trees its catechism. Mountains its religion. 

The Weather its politics. 

Land – ignorant of ownership

 its fealty only to nature – the one solitary truth.

Enter man – the animal- his imposed hierarchy of language

Slick flowery flawless cloak despising dirt: his slang, the poetry of the weed. But Earth laughs at the concrete towers replacing Her trees. Cement sidewalks She cracks for the flower. Mountains that retaliate in anxious subduction as Weather – in convocation with wind and water, declares sovereignty; redistributing Earth’s wealth – the python in the Arctic; ice in the Gulf. 

Ownership, fabricated in the shadow of Earth’s smile

 Guns of deceit ordering Her children

to sing in the chains of servitude. 

It happens that momentary distraction;

Earth’s innocence rendered tooth and nail.  

OPEN CARRY

I’LL BE A WOMAN MODIFIED

CARRYING MY WOMB 

STRAPPED OUTSIDE  

THAT FAMOUS CANAL

MY MOIST BANDOLIER

EXOSKELETON WEAPON

YEAH – YOU FEAR 

I’LL TAKE IT INTO DONUT SHOPS

ICE CREAM & PIZZA MOM & POPS

I’LL MARCH WITH WOMEN

IN MODIFIED LIGHT

AND FIGHT MEN VOTING

TO RECANT MY RIGHTS

ALL WOMEN WANT

IN LIFE SO MEAN

TO SIMPLY HAVE

MORE RIGHTS

THAN AN AR-15

                                                                                                                        G.D. FELDMAN 6/2022  

REINCARNATION

I’LL BE A WOMAN MODIFIED

CARRYING MY WOMB 

STRAPPED OUTSIDE  

OPEN CARRY

MY MOIST BENDOLIER

EXOSKELETON WEAPON

STRIKING FEAR 

I’LL TAKE IT INTO

DONUT SHOPS

ICE CREAM

and PIZZA MOM & POPS

LET LITTLE MEN KNOW

THE FEAR HAS STOPPED

I’LL FLICK THEIR HEADS

OFF MY SHOULDER WITH EASE

COMFORT-SEEKING VERMIN

I’LL NOT APPEASE

THEY’LL PROFESS TO ME

THEIR LOVE AND LIGHT

BEFORE VOTING AND

RECANTING MY RIGHTS

WHEN I RETURN

NO REGRESSION 

TO THE MEAN

I’LL HAVE A LIFE WITH MORE RIGHTS

THAN AN AR-15

                                                                                                                        G.D. FELDMAN 6/2022  

THINKING PAST AND PRESENT

The concept of the drive-thru is beautiful in its simplicity. First for burgers, then donuts, carwash, and now in our clean cars, we sit for precious (monetized) minutes waiting for a macchiato – extra sweet.

~~~

I was a mad-hungry freshman, rubbing last night’s party from my irritated eyes. The fall of 1969: Saturday morning, leaving McDonald’s with my breakfast, I stood on the paper-strewn corner kicking aside shredded protestations for peace. I waited for the light to change, barely noticing the air until I opened my mouth and stuck out my greedy tongue for a salty-sweet hit of those fries. I didn’t get it. Just a bitter sampling of leftover mace, telling me that this was the intersection that ended a peace march the day before. Mace had been successful in dispersing the peace-mongers.

 It would be years before I would connect our drive-thru lives to the forces behind the mace – that clung to the air that angered me for not tasting like fries.  

Converting my guilt to shame.

~~~

Six months into Covid – it is a Saturday morning and I’m driving mad and unmasked to the store. According to county health officials, this epidemic was going to be a long haul. I live in a blue state but in a red county where obedient people listen to a president (who likely failed chemistry) wax poetic and pathetic about science. I turn into the shopping center parking lot, halted by the line of cars patiently waiting for a turn at the Dunkin-Donuts window. Not me! I pull out of line, opting to circumnavigate the deserted K-Mart building, creating a lateral line of attack on my destination. I wait for a few shoppers to withdraw, increasing my chances of surviving what I’m sure will be a pandemic—four people exit. The coast is clear – I don my mask and make a beeline to the front door, where I grab a cart. I breathe shallow dizzying breaths – as I study the store’s arrangement. I am cautious as I approach the domestics on the left, where, after a brief reconnaissance, I make my way out of the Finger Lakes, grabbing a few bottles of good whites. I stand for a moment in the archway leading to the reds. I know the need for urgency but linger anyway at the mercy of ratings. I am deaf to the sounds of my bacchanalian brain stuttering at the sight of French, Italian, Portugal, South African, Spain, and Venezuelan reds– mesmerizing blood-shot pinwheels in a firefight – hand-to-hand combat for space in my cart.

In my obedience to Doctor Fauci’s biblical warning that this plague will be a long haul, I fill my cart – my private Arc – two bottles of each.

~~~

My Spectrum service is broken – I mean down, not working, caput, fin, nothing. For almost ten days, I’ve watched a platoon of Spectrum trucks trace and retrace the road in front of my house to no effect. My hope for a temporary outage had sprung eternal. But now I see the drive-bys as a ploy –like a Russian May-Day parade – a show of strength offering hope where, only a few know, there is none. The outage has been long enough for me to finish Johnathan Foer’s beautiful five-hundred-page tome on love and Judaism. And long enough for me to fear my unread emails growing to legion; so many requests for my dollars to save dogs, cats, goats, donkeys, and sometimes people. Should I worry?

Spectrum seems not to worry. The billing department is sanguine, telling me I will be reimbursed ten dollars for every four hours I’ve been without service. For the first week, Spectrum outage was never, like it is now, continuous. It was more like three-hours of outage interrupted by twenty minutes of service. Even if I had the internet’s stupefying privilege of a misinformed populace right now, I could see the hand of capitalism slapping me in the face with “free enterprise.” I am free, I’ve surmised, to go without or pay dearly. I know where I, the consumer, stand. I even know where I’ll fall if I tumble down my stairs. I may or may not survive Spectrum or my fall – who knows? My cellphone won’t – having been rendered useless in an emergency because of this Spectrum outage. 

MAYBE

It has occurred to me

That 

I may not live long enough

To love my neighbor

Indeed

We may all perish if we don’t learn (quickly)

To love one another

And maybe this is the deficiency – like the dinosaurs

That will bring about our extinction

GROWNUP FRUSTRATION

 

STAT OFLIB LIGHTENING

There’s frustration in behaving like a grown-up

It’s knowing that the lie told against you this morning

Has spanned the continent twice by the

Time you awake

         But you carry on as if it hasn’t

There’s frustration in being the grown up

When grown men fight the way they do

In suits armored with dollar signs

        But you carry on as if they don’t

There’s frustration in behaving grown up

When the agony of the human condition

Is reduced to excuses

And blame

        And you carry on as if it isn’t

There’s frustration in being grown up

When the door to respond-in-kind

 Is locked just by decency

        Yet you pull on it anyway –  as if it isn’t

There’s frustration in being grown-up

Where relief is found in dreams

Ungovernable desires

For the “blood-dimmed tide”

To drown the babble

AND the rabble

        But you desire it anyway

There’s frustration in being grown-up

In knowing the constancy of  war

Is but subliminal chaos disguised as

A throw of the dice

From congressional pits

        And we carry on anyway

         we adults

        As if it isn’t

Dragging care-worn, frustrated hearts

Across mountains of tyranny

Through valleys of decorum

We’ll wrest the locks from ballot boxes

        And slay the lie

        Leaving no weapons

        To defend it