Your Land Is…This Land Is…

[With a nod and many thanks to Colson Whitehead, Leo Connellan and some others subrosa-ly mentioned]

This is not a cactus land,

a dead land, but

a dread land, a land of crusted 

vision and lonely love, vacant

going forward 

to wherever that could be

…or so it seems, maybe, 

always maybe, the risk is worth 

the value, isn’t it?  Isn’t it?

Be smart, more smart than the rest,

very smart, depart, leaving the rest,

leaving the best for the most, the mess.

What’s best is to keep busy, to keep 

as much friending as possible, to keep,

yes, to keep so that collecting is

owning and that’s this, this land of

promised promises…yes, and that, 

yes, with so fun! so pretty fun!

Get!  Spend!  Consume!  Have!

These are the meaning, oh my!

right from the start, even before the

beginning, but if we only had an image, 

what would we look like?  The meaning

must have substance, some thing, 

something, yes, the need to have

to have the thing to believe in,

that’s it.  Isn’t it?  How much much, how much

believing can you heap on having?

Part One

They left from the East, from clogs

and slogs of salient dreams, schemes

and sounds of creation in a new

world, dream images posted by cash 

hounds but no, not like that, not

exactly, so it was like, it was like a motion, 

you know, like moving, that was it, like a big 

thing only not a thing,

I mean, you know, like that.

This is much later, after things got

to be so fun, even going forward, even

that was fun, nothing grubby and loose

and real, you know, I mean it was 

really something,

When they looked they actually

thought that they could see just 

imagine that they could think that

way, looking beyond even the next

trial and try-works as they might have

said, yes, they looked for that next

hill, the one with the fringe on top.

Boppledock told this tale much better back

then when they ignored experience and 

thinking, looking inward away from the only story that

mattered and there was Bop staring them down and

grabbing them by the collar he hollered more than they

would care and moved along to nowhere they were

going and he growled and strafed their mortarboards.

He had more love in his pinky toe than all the churches 

around Orchard Beach and so-called poetry. Ya see,

dantchaknow

Would he take us by the hand and show us the way

crossing America this way?  I don’t think so, not now,

not him, not Bop, cause he knew Bop couldn’t lead

now, not now, with so little love, so little caring around.

We miss Bop but we don’t even know it,

it’s no matter as we say whatever and

he’d hate that in any way,

Anyway, that’s over, and this is

only part one, pursuing, maybe 

becoming for once, just this once

maybe, so we’ll keep trying, I guess.

Part Two

They said, when cracking parched earth, rocky soil

and Indian heads, they said, freedom’s just another

word for license, and some still feel that way, so

long as it’s other folks doing the freedom and worse

it becomes a curse when it’s thrown around so.

He said you could be amusing yourselves to death,

indeed, just narcissusing, your selfies and friending, 

trending and unfriending, sexting and texting, 

twitching and bitching… is all naval gazing, 

all selfie amazing beyond your depth—but awesome, 

in sum, you say, like pretty fun or 

ugly fun and maybe even wholesome? And there

it is, like interesting, like nice, like, I mean,

be real, really like dread (see above) mixed with

awe, a flawless national anathema anthem for a new nation,

yes, this, awesomeness mess.

Yes, you guess, so what is it, vision or revision? Which

turn to take, to tour again, along the now trammeled trails, or

break out to dare a spare hope in the one not taken?  Let’s

see, a sea change, perhaps, but no, too long, too glacial, so 

to speak, ha! that’s a not so good one that no one cares

to share but still can’t duck and cover from the creepy,

crawling, mauling salty spraying high rise.

OK, enough of this stuff, this crabby nega-natality, baggage 

unclaimed remaindered under the skin of septas and octos

not so smart old farts with old eyes unseeing horizons, back

then, as kids, myops wishing for another Bop who never was 

with them, not Bop…and so we end this part for you, 

but not for us.

Part Three

And so, turn or return? re-

Turn to what and where, the exit’s closed…

YIKES! Closed! so we have to deal, make another

real, to turn, really? we might get an erection or

election, yes, really, no time to be needy, but real?

do we know, have we ever had it? we know we

thought we did, as kids, then, but now we ask,

can we miss The Con this time, stay on-a-line this

time can we walk past the emperor of ice cream, and 

not seem but be, can we see past hoping and wanting

and grasp living and loving, that’s the matter, can 

we not be Gogo and Didi, and step past the tree?

Where to start, then, send out a shout as they tried, 

no, not them, not G and D, the others, the ones from 

the street, pushing you to the curb, up in your face,

they tried, but you worked The Con and gave them 

bling to cleanse them of the hope they were shouting

about, about that, let’s move on, going forward, to what ,

to where? you ask, but is to ask to deny, and then why 

bother? well, because dread gets to be souring, and 

bilious—or something like that?—so let’s start and forget 

about one and two, that’s what you did, have done, always

do, but it feels good, so why not? Oh my, all these 

questions! Let’s see, maybe we can reach into pop,

get this gig going with a little snark, a nipsy shark.

So let’s do happy, happy joy, joy, oh boy, boy toys and

ms’s, wagons ho!, oy, oy, the real McCoy boy is what

you want, it is is it?  wait, what? happiness, you guess

and distress, what a mess, they hippity-hopped to their revolt

over there, and was it very fun? you ask. I don’t think

so, no, no bling for them, they know if you want to mend 

and when, then, seem gets to be an actual be and fun 

is a pun for unthinking trickster-hipsters, yes then, a sun 

will shine on some smiling faces, but then, that’s a long way 

off.

So that’s it, that’s the cause and symptom you’ll know,

maybe a glow, a little, maybe, not like before, but more

like a little while ago, you wouldn’t know,

you weren’t there, so you won’t know but will feel it.

and that’s better and makes all the difference.

Colson Whitehead's Chilling Wisdom

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."
              T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets

As I was finishing Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, a passage from the chapter "Ridgeway" kept creeping into my thoughts.  Ridgeway is the unique villain of this novel, much more than the "catcher" role he plays rounding up freedom seeking slaves. He, in fact, belongs to a rich tradition of such chilling characters created by American authors (more on that later)—they embrace their villainy and disparage those who think they are better than villains.  The narrator is inside Ridgeway's mind, summarizing Ridgeway's perspective of the American experience:

     "They'd never seen the likes of this, but they'd leave their mark on this new land,
     as surely as those famous souls at Jamestown, making it theirs through unstoppable
     racial logic.  If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains.
     If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his.  If the white man
     wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.

     Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if
     you can keep it, it is yours.  Your property, slave or continent.  The American
     imperative."

What's chilling in this perspective are not only its hubris and dismissiveness, but also its exclusion of human dignity.  Of all the "catchers" and "patrollers" that dog the terrified slaves' efforts to survive and resurrect their personhood, Ridgeway prevails right up to the last chapter and is forever ensconced in the mind of Cora, the central character.  As he remains in ours, for we know him very well.

He is Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger,  Melville's Confidence Man, and Flannery O'Connor's Misfit.  But those are only a few of his literary likenesses.  We know Ridgeway each time we hear our fellow citizens and leaders justify the exploitation of others in the name of proprietariness and expedience.  We know him each time we hear and read about slavery as the "peculiar institution" and about Native Americans as beneficiaries of European largesse.

One characteristic of "American exceptionalism" is the ease with which we erase the unattractive and cruel events in our history.  We, in fact, are internationally renown for our short and long term memory loss.  And we ought to be grateful for Colson Whitehead's intensely vivid reminder of exactly what is essentially our heritage, our American imperative.

We are what we are.  Whatever we tell ourselves our values are and however we imagine the brilliant light our City on a Hill shines across the globe, we cannot shake the Great Spirit that guides us—if you can keep it, it's yours.

And think for a moment how this underscores the bizarre political season we are experiencing.  This is why I led this post with the quotation from Eliot.  It is safe to say that Donald Trump and, especially, the millions of his true believers embody the American imperative.  We seem to have come to a point in the movement of our society where, indeed, all time and the baggage contained within it are unredeemable.

For me, this is the message of The Underground Railroad.  The metaphor of the novel is not so much escape for Cora and all the thousands of others in 19th century America.  The metaphor is about America's unredeemable time.