<\/p>\n
Forbidden any right to write or speak to countermand Turning every passage into miserable, broken verse. Or denying em equal time to make their case? I realized As in the yellow bellies of jaundiced, jaded, yellow journalists\u2014 Or in the stratospheric mode of The Byrds\u2019 \u201cEight Mile High\u201d Of being a Black Cherokee accused of Murder<\/em> by two degrees A mob to pursue\u2014trap me\u2014between ghetto and Ivory Tower; And still you thought his verse could be published or read? Answer!\u201d Or a vile and vicious niggerfied egghead, cold-blooded, unfeeling. Atrocious Grief<\/em> cankers all Nobility<\/em>, I know, We\u2019d been to Stockholm for the torchlight parades and had turfed up the blackest, saltiest caviar\u2014 (Who\u2019d dast invalidate her Radiance<\/em>? Next, a half-pint of Champagne\u2014 Crimson curled her swirling hair, while (boring) Munro bore away the day.<\/p>\n The immeasurable ugliness of Abacha\u2014 Unbearably mutable, but terribly affable\u2014 Such undignified twerking as rope fanged throats\u2014 To Abacha, that common-place fraud, suave IMF crook\u2014 From the dirty soles of his feet Abacha paid out, that yellow-belly, <\/em>menefreghismo<\/em> joker! Bedraggled straggler, How ya gon get to Heaven? Gotta trick the Devil with your smile! Gotta squirm like a worm through the field! Gon drink down dew and chew up roots! How else is you gon get saved? Ain\u2019t the Milky Way your starry river? Take the North Star as your compass! Bedraggled straggler, No more be a laggard! Crawl and creep, then leap up, haggard, Stride\u2014oh stride\u2014where once you staggered, [Tulum (M\u00e9xico) 25\/02\/23]<\/p>\n I\u2019m a-goin up to Canaan land Attentive to the maps I track, Won\u2019t let no storm me overwhelm! Tender I\u2019ll be where I can love\u2014 [Wells (British Columbia) 19\/7\/19]<\/p>\n X got lynched in the place of the skull, The tearful buried X, but bawled a libel: His blood twinkled, washing thy sins. The crucifix\u2014that scandalous wood\u2014 Lo! Coffins is gonna cough up the dead. The sun and the seas will all bleed red, How\u2019s the undertaker gonna undertake The King of the Jews is God over all: We gotta vamoose from Pharaoh\u2019s place, Trumpet prayers, dawn and noon, night and day\u2014 [St. Peter\u2019s Abbey\u2014Muenster (Saskatchewan) Imperialism<\/em>? A bargain-basement religion! I open History<\/em>, preach it out, Curious Illegality<\/em>\u2014 Let ink spill into sprawled-open books\u2014 [YHZ\u2014Enfield (Nova Scotia) 22 \/ 11 \/ 22]<\/p>\n After the chill flashing of stars\u2014 This antique, eighteenth-century, North Atlantic Bastille\u2014 My gaolers expect my muttered response: Instead, I will be as trenchant as the Atlantic, Anyway, lucidity of Sedition
\nStubborn, deliberate curses\u2014the catcalls and Calumny<\/em>,
\nI recalled Benda; I thought of C\u00e9line (or Louis-Ferdinand
\nDestouches)\u2014polemical, cynical, his bravura ellipses<\/p>\n
\nThe imagist paraphrase wouldn\u2019t countenance clown-
\nFacedness, the prosy Hypocrisy<\/em> of reporters\u2019 outbursts\u2014
\nScreeching, \u201cFree Speech,\u201d save for shouting others down,<\/p>\n
\nThe Press can agitate Yahoos into lynch mobs via exhaustive
\nDenial of Debate<\/em>: Twitter<\/em>\u2019s their mouthpiece, Facebook<\/em> their eyes;
\nSo that Opinion<\/em> turns caustic in the guts of the costive\u2014<\/p>\n
\nTheir giallo<\/em> morals as lily-livered as is quivering Jello<\/em>. Denied
\nAny pleading, I needed to be freed to speak in the resistless
\nStyle of \u201cPositively 4th Street,\u201d i.e., bobdylaneque-identified,<\/p>\n
\nOr Hendrix delivering feedback\u2014ezrapoundly\u2014as if also
\nHeld in a Gitmo cage on the Pisa, Italia, plains in 1945, facing trial
\nFor Treason<\/em>. That\u2019s how I felt\u2014the cinema dilemma, the Woe<\/em>,<\/p>\n
\nOf separation only, and accused by paleface profs and lily-white
\nJournalists, who took the stratagems of Fascism<\/em> and Bigotry
\n<\/em>To exploit the Grief<\/em> of Pamela George\u2019s survivors and ignite<\/p>\n
\nSet the bonfire for my Vanity<\/em>, to demand, \u00e0 la<\/em> McCarthy, \u201cHave
\nYou now or ever befriended (unwittingly) a Squatter<\/em> poet for an hour
\nOr more, who deceased a Cree mother in her Easter-time grave,<\/p>\n
\nSuddenly the Academy was a badly damaged barricade, a Bastille,
\nAnd all my ink was garbage water, and I was either a necromancer
\nConjuring slain tribunes like Malcolm X or Jamal Khashoggi,<\/p>\n
\nThe Defamation<\/em> gave no quarter, had neither bottom nor ceiling.
\nJ\u2019Accuse\u2026!<\/em> is my answer, the technique\u2014pure impasto, gusto:
\nUnlike anything that anyone will ever, ever, ever, get used to! <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nYears After Stockholm<\/h3>\n
\nfor likewise my heart hammered hard
\nas the stammering sea,
\nbecause she\u2019d no longer sink, lacy,
\ninto the sweaty bed,
\nto murder all Mediocrity<\/em>,
\nto be nougat to my tongue,
\nto engage in nubile nugae<\/em> (trifles),
\nwhere we twain could be vulgar idlers\u2014
\nmaking cohesive all extremities\u2014
\nin our walled-off, silken slum\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nwarming to the Nobel Laureate in Literature\u2014
\nAlice Munro
\n(a Canuck topping at last
\nthat Olympics-parallel podium)\u2014
\na smack-down of the bonfires that cancel so many authors;<\/p>\n
\ntruffle-sniff-worthy\u2014
\nin prized sheets where my redhead darling was the habitu\u00e9
\nof my bronze penumbra.<\/p>\n
\nHey, she\u2019d spraddled her nice legs at\u2014ahem\u2014Nice\u2014
\ncatercorner in every quandary of limbs,
\nher milky angles milking me of that nursing fluid!)<\/p>\n
\nthe insolent odor of burning books
\n(as covers singed, seared, scorched)\u2014
\nbanned! (Wasn\u2019t that aroma canned
\ncavalierly in the caviar?)<\/p>\n
\nas my Love was overborne,<\/p>\n\u00c0 Amatoritsero Ede
\n<\/em>(in memoriam,<\/em> Ken Saro-Wiwa)<\/em><\/h3>\n
\nThat peasant Macbeth, that black-tie antichrist!
\nHis Ethics? Muddy Misery<\/em>\u2014ruddy as Ebola!
\nBerserk, that tyrant had the \u201cOgoni 9\u201d iced!<\/p>\n
\nHis presidential gaffes broadcast daffy Bombast<\/em>.
\nHe deemed poets best as corpses\u2014\u201claughable\u201d;
\nSketched pathological ballets for each iconoclast:<\/p>\n
\nThe frightful biting of hemp unto the ninth jugular\u2026.
\nHeadlong bleeding gushed south in crimson gouts.
\nBunga-bunga<\/em> and mago-mago<\/em> were germane\u2014molecular\u2014<\/p>\n
\nThe intuitive victimizer with the constitutive wariness
\nOf a pope. Who\u2019d jail that shat-upon face, CIA spook,
\nCet hitl\u00e9rien<\/em>, that public butcher, so psycho, so carious?<\/p>\n
\nTo the dirty feats of his soul,
\nHis precious, vicious, noxious, \u201cluscious\u201d fascists eat\u2014
\nEven now\u2014like whores of whores, on all fours\u2014the dole <\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>Where the Niger flows into the Weser\u2014tinted pale as a moth,
\n<\/em>Amatoritsero Ede echoes Ken Saro-Wiwa and Syl Cheney-Coker,
\n<\/em>While cream-crest waves beam distressed, distraught froth.<\/em> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n(Excerpt from Canticles III<\/em>)<\/h3>\n
LXIII<\/h3>\n
\nBedraggled straggler,<\/p>\n
\nHow ya gon get to Canaan?<\/p>\n
\nGotta deke them hellhounds off your trail!<\/p>\n
\nGotta take God as your sword and shield!<\/p>\n
\nGon join Jesus in ecclesiastical cahoots!<\/p>\n
\nHow else is you gon laugh at the grave?<\/p>\n
\nCross the Jordan although you\u2019ll shiver!<\/p>\n
\nThe darkness is what each dawn outlasts!<\/p>\n
\nBedraggled straggler,<\/p>\n
\nSalvation<\/em> don\u2019t wait on the laggard!<\/p>\n
\nBut free, and stride where once you staggered.<\/p>\n
\nBedraggled straggler, bedraggled straggler!<\/p>\nXXXIV<\/h3>\n
\nWhere star-dusted tides show clear!
\nI\u2019m a-claspin someone\u2019s helpin hand:
\nMercy<\/em> be my train engineer.
\nMercy<\/em> be my train engineer.<\/p>\n
\nI shed all weight and ramble light.
\nI\u2019m a pilgrim who ain\u2019t turnin back:
\nMy one-way path follows North Star night.
\nMy one-way path breaches North Star night.<\/p>\n
\nCan\u2019t let Sorrow<\/em> hinder or harm.
\nMy train\u2019s got Mercy<\/em> at the helm!
\nSoon I\u2019ll be where embraces warm.
\nSoon I\u2019ll rest where embraces warm.<\/p>\n
\nWhere my heart heals and lungs breathe free.
\nThere\u2019s no disease where I\u2019ll now move\u2014
\nOnly certainty of Liberty<\/em>!
\nOnly certainty of Liberty<\/em>!<\/p>\nV<\/h3>\n
\nBut now He\u2019s Lawd and Rome\u2019s ditched marble!<\/p>\n
\nDidn\u2019t His broke-ope tomb unfold the Bible?<\/p>\n
\nHis body crinkled, so blood could rinse.<\/p>\n
\nWas Evil<\/em>\u2019s last stand, now downed for Good<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nDry bones\u2019s gonna don fresh flesh, then tread!<\/p>\n
\nAnd sinners gonna be all self-destructed.<\/p>\n
\nWhen saints take to skies and the dead awake?<\/p>\n
\nMakes even motherfuckers cringe and crawl.<\/p>\n
\nSo our chains\u2014like tears\u2014dissolve to frayed lace.<\/p>\n
\nWhen God mumbles, loud thunder\u2019s His bray!<\/p>\n
\n19\/5\/19 & 22 mai<\/em> mmxix]<\/p>\nTrotsky in Halifax<\/h3>\n
\nA free breakfast and a long sermon
\nin exchange for exchanging an artist\u2019s brush hairs
\nfor an assassin\u2019s cross hairs!<\/p>\n
\nfor if it remains mute,
\nit mutes Oppression<\/em>,
\nwhich thus remains unknown
\neven while no one goes unharmed:
\nCitizens become a regime of phantoms\u2014
\nslaves, serfs, sycophants, imbeciles\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nthough described intimately by opponents\u2014
\nrequires a crescendo of yowling\u2014
\nthe accumulation of a loud archive
\nof grievances\u2014
\nto reveal its persistent pressures.<\/p>\n
\nso singularly shadowy\u2014
\nto instigate Horror<\/em>, Revulsion<\/em>,
\nat shambolic emperors\u2014
\ntheir compulsive persecution
\nof pamphleteers morphed from ploughmen.<\/p>\nTrotsky in Halifax (II)<\/h3>\n
\nthe ghost blossoms of stars\u2014
\nthe silver-grey fringe of fog\u2014
\nthe uncanny, persistent fog\u2014
\nbearing down within the clammy mist\u2014
\ncometh splatters of rain\u2014
\nblustering crustily over cracking ice\u2014
\ndrummeth April\u2019s potent Pluvi\u00f4se<\/em>,
\ngrandiose rain,
\nalongside surging chills, April-fresh.
\nNo need\u2014in this burg\u2014
\nto pray and swear loudly
\nagainst the overbearing sun\u2026.
\nThere is no sun!<\/p>\n
\nthe Citadel\u2014
\npenitentiaries me in feckless \u201cHospitality<\/em>\u201d\u2014
\nthe fare of the British \u201cRaj\u201d in its ocean-crossing reach.<\/p>\n
\nWords creeping from my throat,
\ndelivered haltingly.<\/p>\n
\nnever contemptuous of conversations.
\n(It would be unchivalrous and unpoetic
\nto not unfurl and wave banners!)<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>is already the seismic unsettling
\nof the \u201copulent factorists.\u201d*<\/a><\/p>\n