Today In The Real Third World

The city on fire
was traffically jammed,
cross circuits of humbled wires
over the intersections of
'used to be a war here'
and
'used to be a war here'.
Struggling their beefy little hearts
out to go on home to their steamy kitchens,
their lousy children and fat wives.
No one any more decent for the excuse
of it all including the rickety
rattan furniture on the balcons
to the beautiful sea on the right
or the left or the center.
Somewhere out there a prostitute wailed
and somewhere else a man spit into a urinal
and still somewhere else out there
was I. In the middle of it all,
chest nearly bleeding from contaminations
fresh from the instructor who hates funerals
(his wife dying in Britain now).
We all hate funerals and burying.
Everyone hates to be in a scene.
Cops are cartoons and stand there
waving this way and that way
so it looks like there are some.
They even wear white gloves!
Life is an illusion, can't you see it?
The real authorities are spies and run
around all day chasing the generalissimos
who aren't all that real either.
The army is a lot younger and unhappier now
in the beds of their jiggling trucks.
I love their smiles. So young. So fresh.
So out there it hurts. So very, very real.


*Of course, Life is an illusion, can't you see it? is from the Quran. I wrote that poem in response to one I read that was just plain awful (somewhere else). Now, it is okay to write poems that aren't that great technically speaking. A poet has to start somewhere you know. What was awful about the poem that I read were two things: the poem itself and one of the critics of the poem. The poem was just chock full of gratuitous and graphic violence. Now, violence is okay but I really hate a poem to get so violent with me it makes me sleepy and fatiqued which I am now, very. Sensationalism in poems however is just awful, especially when it involves so much killing and bloodying up of the set props. Messy. A poem can be violent you see without all the trouble of having to clean up once you've read it. A poem I believe should entertain the reader and entertain them in many ways. The reader ought to leave the poem feeling refreshed or illuminated (to his/her own self because lets face it, there are no new thoughts really under the sun rather, there is just better merchandising). Now, the critic said something truly awful. He said the poem was "Just great!" but that the poet shouldn't be surprised if no one "got it" and I guess I am going to assume that means they are going to say "this poem is awful". Now...as a critic...I would never make excuses for someone else's poem being horrific and lacking in all the things that make good poems good and full of all the things that make bad poems bad (which is usually a general lack of technique).

So I said...here...I'll write you a violent poem in a few minutes and you won't have to clean up after you read it. It might even make you sad enough that it makes you happy because you feel humanly related to it. I think that is the key to good poetry. Relating to another human something very human. Gore isn't human. Gore is taboo. It is just that the TV has made it a staple of the diet and everyone is so amazed at how much blood it takes to make a scene look bloody. I think mine is quite bloody without ever mentioning a shark, a knife, a gun or sheesh, a murderer or the murdered.