THERE'S ALWAYS ONE BIRD LEFT BEHIND

There's always one bedraggled bird left behind
when the flock takes off on its yearly
migration. A frightened pair of jeweled eyes
reflect the huge V-shape of departing wings,
then search the sidewalk for a piece of bread,
pecking at an old shoe left behind
by a man who was chased down Main Street
by a rabid bear, and will one day be President
of the United States of America.
He will tell the audiences at all his rallies
the story of his escape from the bear,
of how he lost one shoe as he ran,
and the audiences will laugh and laugh.
Their laughter will knock the birds
out of the sky. And he will tell them
how good it is that bears are now extinct,
that nothing is left on earth powerful enough
to make a man run down Main Street.
The bird picks up the shoe in its beak
and begins the carry it down the sidewalk.
The shoe is heavier than he is
with his hollow bones
that will make good flutes
for the savages inhabiting Main Street
several centuries from now.
It's 2a.m. in New Hampshire, and all his cousins
in the sky are going crazy.
at this point the town explodes upward
with blue towers of pulsating light.
The sky is a reflection of where he stands.

SHE HATES MY LOOKS

I want to charm a black-haired girl until she's wet
I hope she hates my looks
I want her to love my voice
buying her a piece of fur is suggestive
giving her a handful of popcorn is suggestive
reading the real estate of her palms and fingers
is totally inappropriate

filled green with hate, her dumpsters smile
from everywhere
the multiverse is a bicycle broken
at the edge of a driveway
in the light of a supermarket sign

THE RUINED POET by Luke Buckham

One night he fell asleep earlier than usual
and dreamed that he left his body
and walked around the street on which he lived
wearing the shadow of his usual clothes.
And he stopped at the houses of friends
and told them that he knew that he was dreaming
and wanted them to know that they were dreaming too.
And he asked them to stop by tomorrow morning
to wake him up, and tell him that they had seen him
in their dreams. He asked them all
to leave their bodies every night
and go into the dreams of their neighbors
and tell them that they were dreaming too,
and that it was time to wake up for a great event.
He himself did not know what the event was.
But this is what he would be doing for the rest of his life.

Here's a letter I recently wrote to my local newspaper about a vile subject:

Dear Keene Sentinel,

Whenever I have attended anti-war protests and marches, I have been struck by the popularity of Che Guevara T-shirts. Since Guevara was and is revered as a fierce warrior, known to have personally ordered many people shot by firing squad, I find his presence at "anti-war" rallies darkly amusing. And I can only conclude that either the people who adorn themselves with his image either have no idea who he is or what he did, or that they are not anti-war at all, much less anti-violence. Perhaps they merely oppose the *current* war and/or the way in which it's being carried out, and wish that someone like Guevara would come along and help to take over the White House, placing a new ruler in Bush's place. Upon speaking to various people in these crowds, I find that, although they initially balk at voicing such a desire explicitly, many of them admit, upon further examination, that they do wish someone smarter would topple Bush and take his place, even if some violence were necessary to do so. Many of them have kind words about Fidel Castro, the dictator who Guevera helped put in power. In fact, I have never encountered a denunciatory word about the Cuban dictator at a "peace" protest or any other anti-war gathering. And though I don't want to indulge in negative stereotyping here, I can only report what I've actually encountered.

I mention all this because I find it grating that people who chant slogans promoting peace and freedom of expression are so often quick to condone acts of violence and repression, provided that violence and oppression is carried out by someone sufficiently hip and intellectual. Part of the beef with Bush is that he is making war on freedom of expression, yet Michael Moore was allowed to make millions of dollars from 'Fahrenheit 9/11' on this soil, and Bush made no attempt to shut him down, while Castro regularly imprisons "subversive" journalists and artists for publicly opposing his regime. The great Cuban poet Renaldo Arenas covers some of this in his beautiful novel 'Before Night Falls', in which he describes the persecution of himself, and many others, for homosexuality and writings critical of the new regime, and other "counter-revolutionary" practices at the hands of Castro's regime. Here is a quote from Castro himself (from pg. 190 of Leycester Coltman's 'The Real Castro'), concerning freedom of expression: "People here have expressed the fear that the Revolution will drown freedom of expression, and suffocate the creative spirit of writers and artists...But the revolutionary should place the interests of the revolution above even his own creative spirit." As anyone who knows anything about the past fifty years of Cuba's history knows, Castro expects every citizen of his country to be a "revolutionary".

I did not vote for Bush, and I count myself among his opponents. I think he represents America's worship of mediocrity, impatience, and blind force. But has Bush ever said anything so explicitly sinister toward freedom of expression, much less attempted to enforce it? Opponents of Bush regularly accuse him of being isolationist, but what is more isolationist than a critique which ignores or excuses the cruelty of rulers in other lands while obsessing over the failings of our own? I've usually found the spectacle of millionaire Marxists like Rage Against the Machine (who helped to popularize Che's image) amusing, but their admiration of people with ideals and practices even more violent and restrictive than those of Bush makes me wonder what they want to see our system replaced with. Is there any country on earth with a counterculture as protected, as rich and as harebrained as that of the U.S.?