by Mark Folse
Another Police Riot
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I
am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of
morality.”
— James Baldwin
The NYPD vomited
out of armored trucks
black as the horses of
Lorca’s Guardia Civil:
brutality of batons,
tear gas breathing dragons.
They beat punched kicked
the world's new rootless
who renounce boundaries,
the wide-eyed youth
who claim no nation but
humanity.
Today it is Palestine.
Tomorrow
they will come
for all the rest
of the malcontents,
the simply different,
the impious, the malingering poor.
What is to be done?
You say you want
a revolution?
§
I was not there. I'm writing
in a chair in a coffee shop
across from The Strand bookstore.
That was yesterday’s news and
tomorrow my daughter
will be hooded
for her doctorate
in psychology. She works
in a state mental hospital
filled with America's
damaged children.
Bailing daddy out of jail is not
on the commencement program.
What then is witness
from such a distance?
What were Palestine
or Vietnam to Baldwin
when he wrote those words?
Sometimes knowing
the horror is enough
if you can tell it true
far and wide, speak
out where other voices
fail.
Shall I wait
patiently until
the immigrants are
gone, for the Black Terror
of churches, violent riots
of patriots, all dutifully
watched over by
mirrored riot masks
of State clutching
truncheons of rage?
Write the light
that needs to be,
the flare of rags in
the heroic poetic
Molotovs of history.
Go Bag for the Final Apocalypse.
- A careful inventory of your sins.
- Sewing kit or set of safety pins.
- The memory of childhood prayers.
- Clothes to be arranged in warmer layers.
- Beloved object given to you by your mother or father
- Jewelry or anything of value to barter.
- The book you want read to you as you lie dying.
- Handkerchief in case of crying.
- Photo of an absent loved one.
- Hat and lotion against the burning sun.
- Some comforting religious talisman.
- Your journal to write in.
- A favorite memory of every friend.
- The person whose hand you’ll hold at the end.
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