50/fifty

Poems

By David Joseph




50/fifty

Poems

©2007 by David Joseph
Red Wheelbarrow Press, 594 Chestnut St, San Francisco CA 94133

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution."--Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

America

Standing Tall

Standing tall
Tall and erect
Fat and hard
You are
Standing tall
If you are
Standing tall
If you are
Standing
Standing at all

If you are
Standing at all
You are
Standing tall
And if you're not
Standing at all
You are not
Standing tall
At all
You're not
Standing
So tall
At all

Yes
America
Standing tall

United We Stand

United We Stand
We Stand United
We Stand So United
We Stand 50 United

We so-so United
We Fifty
We 50/50
We Be Split Down The Middle

We 50% Democrat
We 50% Republican
We 50% Registered to Vote
We 50% Too Hopeless to Bother

The 50% Registered
We 50% Bother to Vote
We 50% No Bother to Vote

The 50% Too Hopeless
We 50% Too Down
We 50% Too Stupid

Of the 50% of the 50%
Of u.s. (25%)
50% Vote Democrat
50% Vote Republican
50% of 50%
(25%) of u.s. Vote
Of the 25%, 50%
(12-1/2%) Decide

12-1/2% of Voters (or less)
Elect for the 100% of u.s.
12-1/2% of the 100%
(probably less)

United We Stand?

The United States is like two countries
One they call red, one they call blue
One Republican, one Democratic
One rich, one poor

The United States is like two countries
But instead of a North and a South
It's got an East and West coast
And the other country between

With little coastal access except the Gulf
The island of New Orleans
A blue ghetto in a Red Sea
Mainlines the heartland up the Mississippi

It's like two countries, the United States
One conservative, one liberal
One reactionary, one progressive
One Christian, one secular
It's like two countries, the United States
One corporate, one populous
One for the few, one of the many
One holds all the real estate

The other one is the people
One steals the national treasure
One fights and dies in the wars
Standing on one leg if you've got a leg

To stand on on the legs of our two coasts
Stand strong but the heart has another country
You fly across the compassed patchwork
A gulf the size of Mexico

My country is separated from my country
By the country between u.s. and I want my
Country back again recalling Phil Ochs' words
"You've cut the heart out of it"

United We Stand

United We Stand

We so divided into divisions
And into divisions of divisions
And divisions of divisions of divisions

We so divided
We can't stand it
We so divided
We can't stand

So I guess that must be
The reason why
We so United

So I guess that must be
The reason why

United We Stand

America

America

Once beautiful
Now the ugly American

The United States

A country with a government
That never saw a war it didn't love

The US Flag

An obscenity
Worse than fuck

Our National Anthem
A disgrace
"The Blood-Splattered Banner"
America, America

God shed Her grace on thee
And now see how you've squandered it

USA, USA, USA

Imbeciles! Idiots!
Insane! Psychotics!

In God We Trust

We trust in nothing
But the next dollar bill

One Nation
Under God

Under God?
That is your lamest excuse

E Pluribus Unum

United we stand?
But what do we stand for?

We, The People

We the people
Wake up

The Constitution

Not about you or me
But about us, we the people

Your Civil Rights

This is not a test run
This is it, the real thing

The American Ruling Class

Bloodthirsty butchers
Bathing in blood

The Cheneys, The Bushes

Rich oligarchs
Squeezing blood out of oil

The Vice-President, The President

Coal-blooded chickenhawks
Strong-arming the National Security State

The US Government

A raptor swooping down upon the world
The Eagle has landed




NEW MORNING
For Derek

1
Something about the blue boat on the blue page
Of the blue book with the blue lines sailing
The blue seas under the blue skies of blue paper
With the blue watermark
Something about the blue boat on the blue waves
Across the blue days to the blue ends floating
Off the blue waterfall to the blue underside
Knocked down & re-righted

The whole world turned up side down & then
The sun comes up sunny side up & hot
Hard boiling your egg rolls & rolling your
Legs across the table

Blackout something about a sock in the eye
Not a sockeye salmon but a right fishhook
That blocks off the lock up to black night
Foot in the mouth
Blackout something about a cell phone
A pack a wallet a wallop a dollop
Whereabouts hereabouts thereabouts
A check book to bounce

Falling off the wall the height of the curb
Off the cliff side the depth of asphalt
A blue boat sails with sails unfurled
Wing & wing
2
How late the daylight edges toward the northern lights
Journeying in a blue boat gilded in a mussel shell
With slung from its mast a lantern like our old
Idea of the soul
Off the wetlands & into the sky a flock of geese
Going south something about flying in a V
At the conjunction of Taylor & Chestnut & Via
Colombo: "Just one question, ma'am"


Blackout something about a van a blue van
A light blue van a light blue Dodge van
A light blue Dodge van with three men
& a woman

The jet blue propulsion of a rocket likes a D-Roc-
n-Roll eerily flying airily in an arc over an aerie
living "la vida loca" everything going south
in a puzzle of bone reassembled and sewn
Open your eyes up for us give us two fingers up
Give us a V for victory our victory in peace
And not in pieces this Pisces piece of piercing
Two fingers up open your eyes

For we be throwing out a peace sign to have no war
But War before us The World Is A Ghetto sitting here
In My Four Cornered Room as we go Slipping Into
Darkness saved by Beetles in the Bog

3
Breathing tube out pneumonia down
Breathing mask on blood clot down
Breathing tube out feeding tube out
Oxygen mask off intubations out
Heart rate regular O2 levels up
In the blood plasma thinner OK’ed
T-cell count up the hospital mantra
Those white cells in the blood

Remembrance in a bouquet of flowers
A white poppy for peace a red poppy for memory
This page intentionally left blank Left Bank
& right brain on the Seine

I see you soberly leaning forward
Upon the precipice of your life
Seeing the absolute randomness
Of tragedy through the ER doors
Knowing you’ve been over the wall
Under the carapace of dura mater
The bone flap off edema down
The bone flap re-sewn on again


As the waiting room echoes with voices
Of families of all colors & one class
Sharing these traumas & our dramas
As soon the double doors fly open

4
Coming out of the blackness
Into the blues and greens
Pressed into the darkness
Forming diamonds full of bases
And homes and green expanses
Of infields and outfields
Of grand slams and splash hits
And Barry hits a new home run

This ball has your name on it
This day has written your name
Every morning is the first
Everything is now

Your mom tells you she's your mom
You say you know
Your mom tells you she's here
You say you know
Your mom says she loves you
You say you love her too
Your mom says she'll be back
You say you know

The nurse says you're a New Yorker
You must be a big Yankees fan
You say, "Fuck the Yankees!"
Go, Giants!



*




SOUP

For Carol Tarlen


It can be made of any and all of the vegetables you can find.
A clear, vegetable broth will do fine,
though seasonings such as fresh basil
help. Cut the vegetables up around a round,
butcher block table. This is the social component of work.
The knife dices the vegetables, the means of production.
The diced vegetables pile up, division of labor.
Draw the water from the tap into the pot.
This is social organization.
Set the pot on top the stove over an eternal flame of gas jet.
Man (sic) and nature must of necessity be of the same invention.
As the water heats the vegetables may slowly revolve.
Aquariums have a peaceful effect on people I've noticed.

It always reminds me of those mobile sculptures
which turn constantly in the air suspended solidly from above,
except this motion is supported by gas and turning within.
Consider the soup from within like philosophy and life,
the element we swim in.
The broth is clear, a methodology.
The vegetables revolve, social relations.
Yes, but they are centered, free flowing,
clearly not the class of society we live in.
We are seeing history, a process, cooking soup,
from within and -out, a contradiction.
But dialectics cannot presuppose metaphysics.
A slice of carrot does not change into celery.

What is to be done?
Add more vegetables.
Bring it to a boil.
Already we see it stratifying.
Whatever you do don't let the bottom burn.
If it does it ruins it, in my opinion anyway.
Stir the soup, the struggle of everyday life,
with a large ladle, which must be an analytical tool.
Let it simmer.
After a long time of cutting and cooking, finally,
it's time to sample.
What do you say?
OK, it's soup.

I like mine, clear, in a glass bowl for observing,
not externalities, but within, the materials
that give it its driving force, the nobility of carrots,
cabbage's mobility, tanginess of turnips and squash's oblivity,
celery's connectivity and potatoes' stolidness,
and tender onions and mushrooms, all found in an exchange,
that feed us, give us sustenance, steaming up into our faces.

Clear, sure, but thick as a brick
in an earthquake. Clear as being,
clear as being naked and substantial,
naked like me without my clothes on,
naked as being,
naked as being born,
naked as being born again,
naked as love,
as the new human being whose most earnest desire
the whole world over is to flower out with all
creative abilities intact and relate, a new social contract.

Substantial as this world we find ourselves in in this
morass of history with its pains and ecstasies,
joys and humiliations, spooning up at us in completely
unpredictable combinations of surprise and tedium,
alienation and horror, and most of all, of hunger.
And perishable, as this and all life.

We pour the soup into industrial buckets,
transport ourselves to the hungry, all of this
done surreptitiously, for we live in a world where
things do not follow, where the bombs drop daily
on the presence of the hungry. Food to the hungry you say?
But things are in opposition to things. People against people.
Assertions; denials.

If I say that I am with you, and I am with you, then
I cannot be against you. I am against you.
Privilege denies scarcity as scarcity knows nothing of privilege,
only the small amounts which may be retained in memory,
yet both exist, complement and contradict.
One cannot be homeless and start a soup kitchen
without organizing those with homes with those without.

And so, clandestinely, we go into the mist of the night air
watching for the headlights and nightsticks, risking arrest
in a society in which it is a crime to feed the hungry,
a crime for friends to share food among friends, enemies,
intimates, strangers, in short, a crime to have a picnic.

In a society like this, we are all guilty, all of us,
in our complacency and activism, of breaking the law,
whatever law the powers choose to employ, of being
in the way when the goddess of democracy falls, and,
we are guilty of bearing the weight of justice,
whichever way the scales drop, guilty of our innocence.
We do not want help; we want empowerment.

Your Honor, how do I plead? Make soup. Eat.
Do you understand how good soup tastes?
Lose your job, lose your home, lose your family,
your friends, your love, your Honor, and everything,
but your dignity, and sometimes, even that, yes,
sometimes that too, and all your hope of being
or doing anything in this life with anybody.
You'll understand.

I think that now we are ready to construct everything new.
I think that now we are ready to continue singing.
I think that now we are ready to go on writing poems.
I think that now we are ready to give the future a massive hug.
We are ready. This is the beginning.





THE FOUR-YEAR CYCLE

BBC News--"Twelve-year old Mohammad al-Dura was caught on camera as he was shot in crossfire while cowering behind his father." (in Netzarim Junction, Gaza)

I'm living in a four-year cycle

Carol & I were in "England's green & pleasant land"
when we got the news
From Israel, a portent of the years to follow
A new intifada still going four years later

I'm living in a four-year cycle

Carol & I were in "England's green & pleasant land"
Bad news from Israel
We saw the pictures of that poor man
Trying to save his son's life

So much to love, so much lost
That poor man, he was much loved
A handsome young father reaching out to his boy as if his arms could protect him from the bullets spewing out of the Israeli army machine guns

There is a way bodies jerk upon impact
by the projectiles which when viewed appear as though none of this were really happening, but these arms wrapped around in an embrace express one last gesture of defiance borne of love, solidarity & resistance



David Joseph edited Working Classics magazine. He was anthologized in Liberating Memory (Rutgers University Press). He is a recipient of the Poets 11 prize for 50/fifty, New Morning and Soup in 2007. This is his first chapbook.