October 1, 1991
Straight, mostly white men
Like a Magritte painting
Stand on cold concrete
Waiting for an already late train
Hands clasped like bored teachers
Politics plastered on their faces
From New York Times newsprint
Thoughts consumed with making money
These Wall Street soldiers
Ever losing the war to age,
As newer, younger soldiers
Pop up like mushrooms
To take their place.
Oct. 16, 1991
They poison America’s ears
With left wing plots
Mistaking conspiracy for Democracy,
Alternative voices inside my head,
Specters lying wait in the grass
Of every front yard
Waiting to gobble up our children
And sell them as slaves
Your child first, then mine,
TV quoting experts of their own choosing
To sell their own paranoid brand
Sound-bites like bullets
Not so much “keep America free,”
But to kill it,
Murdering off each new decenter
Until no other voices survive
October 18, 1991
All they do is remind you
Of how bad it is on the line,
The sweat and struggle
Of people who have to do
What all bosses tell them
Earning wages and woes
Lost for an afternoon
The briefest of time
To think, sigh, or mumble
Don’t talk, Jerk!
Work, work, work!
October 10, 1991
This should be no surprise
Americans have always been greedy,
Beating up the defenseless
To make a buck,
Daniel Boone built up
into a hero over time,
the tick of the clock
justifying mass murder
as if history has
a statute of limitations.
October 22, 1991
Factory life, brick-faced
People bruised with labor
No sweat shops here in Jersey
But slavery non the less
Monarch bosses
Exploiting high price
In attorney fees
Workers making too little to sue
And those that do,
Won’t.
October 10, 1991
Ragged figure huddled
In the train station
Proves hippies still exist
Thought dirtier
Than memory paints them
And more hungry
Stepped over and on
By marble-faced
Wall Street crowd
Men who read
Newspapers
But don’t sleep under them.
October 24, 1991
They want us dead
Rewriting history
From the losers
Point of view
Turning heroes
Into tainted saints,
Telling us they cheated
When they won.
October 25, 1991
Mad rush tea hour kettle
Boiling point of humankind
Locked into a chrome insanity
No mercy for the innocent
Just waiting to get home alive
And in one unaltered piece.
October 26, 1991
Dreamy children
Look for answers in the sky
Lottery numbers,
Grumble for love
No importance to existence
Breathe, eat, shit and fuck
Until they can’t anymore
October 27, 1991
Mercy? What’s that? Weakness?
You fight for your space on a line
Not like the Russians do, but with
The dream of being number one,
No shortage of losers in this game
Just us winners, sad saps with ideas
Of being kind and finishing last.
October 30, 1991
Oh Jefferson, you old fraud,
Confused purveyor of human rights
Who still kept slaves until his dying day,
You should have shot Hamilton
While you had the chance,
Before he betrayed us,
Before he turned our dream
Into pieces of the machine,
Not leaving it up to Burr
Who was no better.
November 3, 1991
Better fuming than dead,
Anger feeding the hero,
Jousting windmills without it,
We with no sword or shield
Merely rage.
Nov. 11, 1991
No one’s important here
But everybody thinks they are
Hard work pays little in dignity
But defiance pays less,
A starvation wage
That weeds out the unworthy
Those of us with too much to say
And risk ruining the game
Nov. 12, 1991
They chatter outside
The black barber shop
On Veteran’s day,
Waving not flags
Over the rumors of war,
Rotting under the shroud
Of unemployment,
Even the old men chatter
Harsh voices lost in the cold wind,
Talking of the 80,000
Cast off welfare in Michigan,
And of homeless dying
As winter comes.
November 11, 1991
Law and order men
Ride around town in Lincolns
Indignant as spoiled children
Yet with children of their own,
Five, ten, fifteen years married
With stores on Main Street downtown
Rushing through red lights
And poor mixed neighborhoods like this
As if exempt from the law.
November 15, 1991
They come out in twisted threes
Social Security a refuge
To the tired and hungry masses
The Statue of Liberty once embraced,
Making the rounds of Passaic
As if one large game board,
Knowing that sooner or later
They will eventually
Pass GO.
November 16, 1991
Dream meal, mixed mind
Images of iron day
I wake, wonder, worrying
About the blank TV
And the heart-empty sense
Of me and my race.
November 26, 1991
Spoiled entitled people
Ride the back of the bus
Screeching laughter
Odd people out to test
The patience of an already
Over-stressed bus driver
Seeing how long it takes
Before he goes crazy.
Nov. 11, 1991
Never the same
The slave trade requires
Family attitude,
Even blacks expected to love
Their master,
Though these days
We trade
Skin color for
Economic opportunity
But the message remains the same
One of feeling trapped.
December 1, 1991
No sweat, dreams of
Waking up alive is
Sometimes the best
You can get, cold
Winds streaming down
The streets, passed
Cardboard shelter
And bare skin (often brown skinned)
Blankets
A hard life is when
You don’t wake up
December 2, 1991
Not yet anyway
That’s what the man
Said when I asked
If anyone has frozen
To death, putout
From the Port Authority,
Not yet, but then
The temperature hasn’t
Fallen below freezing
This year yet either.
December 10, 1991
Right or left wing
Bigots speak delusion
As they spill propaganda
Into innocent heads,
Their hope to raise them
To some higher level of hate
December 12, 1991
Innocent boy with blond
Hair, pressed, molded,
Made to feel guilty
When he sees his black twin
Dying in the street
For lack of love
December 13, 1991
Workplace slave trade
Living at the whim of a boss
Losing hours to his desire
Can’t plan a life
Just wait and perspire
December 16, 1991
What do you expect
From stupid people,
These children
Of the children of the sixties
Who can’t find Viet Nam
Or even Afghanistan
On a map,
Telling pollsters they’d be
Willing to redo The Bill
Of Rights, jail drug
Addicts on found
Evidence, break
In without warrants
Condemning their own
Children to a future
Where such things
Might well be done
To them.
December 9, 1991
Rude shoppers rule the mall
With middle class indignity
Ownership slave mastery
Mentality of peasants
Who themselves are really
Slaves only
They don’t know it.
December 20, 1991
No one is clean,
You wash laundry
In strong bleach
And it still comes
Out with stains
This is called
Being human,
And it hurts like hell.
