Blood Moon

What must they have felt?

The bright harvest ball, beaming

Their hope for plenty,

Dimming so slowly, such

Agonizing slowness, taking hope

To scarlet smear and a worse than

Darkness doubting their eyes,

Silencing their night sounds,

Did they feel crazy, did they

See crazy anyway, anywhere?

We conjure demons without

Sighting some actual something,

For

We have demons enough within

Us

To know their natures, their

Familiar.

Blood moon,

HA! simple

Science,

You see.

But they who cowered,

They are in us, yes,

Even though we shove them

down they rise still in

Our fears, yes, they believed

Then, because sometimes

They were right enough

Sometimes.

De-sorting

Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort excellently explains and delineates how the cultural explosions of the 60s fragmented and factionalized the US into satellites of “like-minded” communities.  Thus, we Americans sorted ourselves into comforting mutual admiration mini-cultures, which, for the most part, disdained but did not confront the other mini-cultures.  It would seem that such a life would be the happiness that we were ordained to pursue. 

But we had forgotten and forsaken the better wisdom of the founders.  The states and the mini-cultures in them were not to be singular; they were to be united.  The problem with our post-industrial, post-modern world is that it has sparse memory.  What little memory we have involves only the chaos and fear of the 60s.  We sought the solace and serenity of our like-mindedness as a bulwark against what we could not bother to contemplate and understand.   It got in the way of our rampant consumerism.

A few years ago I did some research into the origins and manifestations of rap and hip hop.  One manifestation that warrants a great deal more research and analysis is the graffiti, or, as the “writers” preferred to call it, “taggin’.”  Taggin’ is the more appropriate term.  When it began (partially as a reaction to the chaos and terror surrounding the representative neighborhoods, the likeminded communities), it functioned as shout outs to the home community and competitive call outs to the other satellite communities in the region.  A debate remains whether it started in the Bronx, Brooklyn or Philadelphia.  The debate notwithstanding, the fact remains that its bedrock was social and psychological communication.

For all that Bill Bishop tells us about the religious, tribal and economic causes of “the big sort,” he neglects to discuss this phenomenon within the marginalized communities. And what distinguishes them from the comfort-seekers among the dominant communities is that they were reaching out to each other.

I won’t go into the historical sources of this re-socializing phenomenon in the history of the American and South American slave trade.  My point is that it sustained a survival mechanism based on shared cultural identifications, grounded in competitive art forms.  That is, as the turmoil around these marginalized groups imminently threatened to sort them into increasingly impotent satellites, they promoted a traditional de-sorting procedure that promised to re-group their energies and their identities.

I have a feeling that this is precisely what Barack Obama had in mind when he talked about change.  He wanted to de-sort our nation.  He wanted to dislocate the 40 year emphasis on difference and divisiveness.  He wanted to shout out the identity that we all once shared, a United States of America, to reject our fear and acrimony.  Re-charge our energies to do the right things.  Ignore calls for dishonor.  Make US a good people again.

Ironic end note:  Near the end of his book, in a footnote, Bishop cites Obama, saying “Illinois senator Barack Obama presented himself early in the 2008 campaign as the man of the earth candidate [a class of arbitrators in the Nuer tribe of the upper Nile…had no formal powers, but they had cultural authority to settle disputes], the politician able and eager to speak to­—and listen to—all sides.”

This sad and edgy irony is what currently impels us Americans into a murky and foul unknown.

A Poem To Chew On

On Having Read Ishion Hutchinson’s “The Old Professor’s Book”

                 [The New Yorker, September 17, 2018, p. 37]

I suppose I come to this as

Another winnowed out professor, well aware

Of his abuses but never quite ready to

Accept those aspired truths, which remain stilled

In those scarred minds incised by his espousals.

For no matter how we strugglers at

The wheel of the art may boast of “how

To align poetry with truth” we know, from

The certainty of our travail, the inevitable

Chagrin awaiting our efforts, the reader’s frown.

The struggle, honestly, is whether to be, rather

Than only to know—the dynamo creating “the

Voltage of self-alienating poetry,” in fact, the discovery

Behind the voice of the self-alienating mea culpa in Browning’s

Narrator’s tale of the grammarian, the funeral, not the burial.

And so, this challenging poem, worthy as well, brings

Us back to that grammarian’s funeral—that is ours,

Imminent and effectual—for our death matters only

So far as we are certain that our life had significance, had

The truth of living, not only knowing, but also weeping, perhaps, for all.

What have we become?

...from a letter to the editor at The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2018

"To the Editor:

Roger Cohen asks, Who are we? What have we become? Look at the corruption on Wall Street. Look at the weaponizing of the Supreme Court. Look at supposed Christian leaders falling into lock step with this sociopathic president. Look at the lies behind our endless wars. Look at the Kardashians. Look at a century of American interference in other nations’ elections.

That’s who we’ve become, and it did not all start with Donald Trump. We are merely entering harvest time for all those evil seeds planted decades ago. And the fruit is exceedingly bitter.

Daniel Lake, Mirror Lake, N.H."

"Self Comes to Mind"

(after Antonio Damasio's marvelous book)

I, finally,
am I, alone,
not other, not it,
not they or them.

To be, actually, as 
author, builder,
telling and trying
all and none, but
now, finally, knowing,
the difference and the
indifference, but still
knowing and feeling as I.

And, actually, all now
being, so, as I, then, all
forgettable change, I,
now, glittering nova.

A Life in Wars

I have suddenly realized (at age 80) that my life encompasses multiple wars.


• ages 0-7: World War II.

• ages 12 to 13: Korean War

• ages 28-37 : Vietnam War

• ages 65-80: Iraq/Afghanistan Wars


What effect has this had on me?  I hate war.  I have personally known people who have been forever negatively affected by their experience in wars.  I have not personally been involved in fighting wars.  I know that to secure U.S. hegemony these wars have been conducted.  I also know that for as long as the U.S. empire survives, wars (physical and/or cyber) will be executed in the name of this empire, and that fact will condition how the people of the U.S. perceive their country.

If this were an absurdist play, we could all leave the theatre assured of the rightness of our lives.  But this is not an absurdist play.  This is our lives and the lives of our progeny.  What effects will we and  they endure?

A Mending Poem for Our Angst

MAYFLOWER CISTERN I FEEL MY PILGRIM WORRY

All day long I feel my pilgrim

worry.  Crude and unforgiving

as the buckle on my boots.  I mark

the boundaries of the town

and then I build a fence.  I build

a pillory and scaffold.  I bring

my gun into the forests.

And my axe.  Inside me.  I hurl

my brittle body at the pines.

I have a plan for them.  A way

to make them useful, which

is God’s compact with the world.

Whatever does not welcome

me I tear asunder.  Whatever

welcomes me was mine to

sack and bring to my knees.

I give the gift of my hunger

to everyone.  And then

I build a fence.  The does

Is certainly a sorceress.

The sparrow was the woman

smiling into the mirror

of the well.  What will I make

of this country?  Inside me,

My pilgrim huddles in the corner

of my heart.  Which I hate

for its hopeful sounding.

Its unwillingness to know

the truth of how broken

and beyond salvation is.

                        Gabrielle Calvocoressi

(published in The New Yorker, July 23, 2018, p.41)