1.
It once took me twenty minutes
to run
from Moscow to Venice...
California.
After I finished I glanced back
at every place I took
...or left...
a shit.
You’d be surprised
how quickly your bowels work
when you’ve run two thousand miles.
In each turd
I saw dozens of clutched flags
grinning and wagging at me
like a brain-damaged puppy.
Here’s a shit in Warsaw,
flying the Polish flag,
the German in Bonn.
In Lyon the Tricolor
sticks up from the dump.
And of course none waved so furiously
or emitted a worse stench
than the thousands of flags in the US of A.
I’d like to say that each one held
sentimental memories for me,
that each festering pile
contained tomes and monuments.
I’d like to say
that when the air blew through
the stench gave way to sonnets.
I’d like to.
But I won’t.
A shit is just a shit,
a flag just a flag,
an airplane
just another piece of paper.
2.
There’s the difference
between you and me.
I know these words
are useless.
They won’t rebuild kindergartens
or shoe factories,
or UNESCO sites.
They won’t give us back a shared history,
or a child their lost joy.
They won’t feed Mariupol,
or Aleppo,
or the Lower Ninth Ward.
Kandahar,
Pyongyang,
Caracas.
Or any of the other cities
that never made it into your definition
of civilization.
These words won’t comfort anyone.
They certainly don’t comfort me.
I’ve spent months and years
sitting outside cemeteries and morgues,
begging passersby
to listen,
promising them magic.
Only when I at last understood
what Zeitlin had been telling me
all this time
did I realize I was wasting my breath.
I can’t even read Yiddish,
but I still learned what I put on the page
needed to be pointless
to be worthwhile.
Just six lines
to unlearn two decades
of facile heroics.
And so,
I’ve scrawled these stupidities
on a paper plane of my own.
And I hope
against hope
that they destroy
your certainty.
3.
Place their hearts here,
in between your favorite book
and the faded kindergarten drawing
your mother still has
hanging on the fridge.
What did you desire to be when you grew up?
Not want.
Desire.
The root of every nerve
pleading in unison,
riding the wind,
of burning paraffin.
And when did you decide that it was easier to give up
than to desire anything?
Now tell me:
when these hearts beat,
do the pages feel it?
Are they sensitive to the warmth?
Do they hunger for vivacity and touch?
Do their creases and folds
mimic the sinews of this vital muscle?
4.
You putz.
You sanctimonious faker.
You bourgeois rejectamenta.
The whole world is already living
in your no-fly zone.
And like every coward
you’ve exchanged your cosmic grief
for the smug symbol.
Yours is the sorcery of idiots and cynics.
Of faded NGO stickers,
and small-town SWAT teams.
Those who are asleep to history change it
in ways that horrify them.
And you…
you pride yourself on your
ability to sleep without dreaming,
chew without tasting,
read without revelation,
and speak while saying nothing.
When you finally wake up
all you’ll do is stand to the side
and point your finger.
One last feeble self-absolution
in a life lived for banality.
Too scared to look to the stars.
Too petty to let others see for themselves.
Only you could make the apocalypse so tedious.
Try…
Try to give the same deference
to the wax scrapes of a child
as you do a flag planted in shit.
Until then,
miss me.
These scribbles won’t end a war.
They won’t be filmed
as they float down the center of the Guggenheim
or slide on its gun-concrete floors.
They make no pretense
to changing history.
These words
can’t even pay my electric bill.
But if they can bring
your insufferable ass down to my level,
then they’ve done their job.
This poem originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review 9. Social media splash image is the back cover of Locust Review 9 (by Tish Turl and Adam Turl). Locust Review 9 cover by Adam Ray Adkins.
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