i don’t know why i've always hated
poems about old dogs i'm not sure
if it’s because of the cheap emotions
or if it’s just because the dog
always dies in the end
but my old dog just died
and those emotions just don’t seem
all that cheap to me anymore

she was a golden retriever not quite ten
and though her face had grayed and her
health had been fading for the last year
it was still a shock to find her there
when we went to let her out
before leaving to go to dinner

she was sweet lucy gray
named for wordsworth’s tragic heroine
and she was better than your dog
and even though everyone says that about
their own dog everyone else is wrong

she was sweet lucy gray
loved very much by a little girl
who gathered up her dog's favorite
toys to take to her new home
of endless golden meadows
filled with tennis balls and joy

she was sweet lucy gray
the best friend of a little boy
who lost a bit of his boyhood today
trading it for a mass of manhood
helping his father dig her grave
fighting through the tears and blisters
for a final act of tribute and of love

“This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery”
–The Rev. Hayes Wicker on a proposed Florida state constitutional ban on same sex marriage
Naples Daily News, April 17, 2008

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”
–Huckleberry Finn on deciding to go against his society's religious beliefs and not send Jim back into slavery

i dreamt i watched fox news
broadcast the sermon on the mount
it appeared to be in an amphitheatre
like oak mountain in birmingham
but it could have been anywhere
red rocks chastain park or woodstock
jesus stood on a large stage with banners
huge speakers and jumbotron screens
but the crowd was a little disappointing
a few thousand perhaps but not the tens
of thousands one would expect at such
a monumental and historical occasion

jesus did not look anything like those haloed
representations that have been passed down
and programmed into us through the centuries
he had strong almost exaggerated jewish
features but it was hard to tell if he was
a dark-skinned white guy or a light-skinned
black guy he did have beard but it was a little
unkempt and his dreadlocks were quite radical

the text of his sermon was a fairly faithful
version of matthew’s account only slightly
modernized from the rsv but his preaching
style was unexpected he was not the calm
laid back font of gentleness you’ve seen
in the movies and stained glass windows
he was angry and animated perhaps even
a little agitated speaking in a tone somewhere
between an inspired martin luther king and
a particularly irate reverend jeremiah wright

don’t get me wrong he was good very good
in fact but you had to allow yourself to let go
a little to truly hear what he was saying
and the crowd didn’t seem to be willing
they seemed a bit agitated actually like they
were a little put off possibly even offended
by some of the things jesus was saying
there were even a couple of places where
people prominently jeered and booed

there were also some coincidental
and fateful ironies in fox’s broadcast
early in the sermon when jesus stated that
the meek are blessed and will inherit the earth
the ubiquitous news crawl at the bottom of the
screen cried out that tensions between the us
and iran were reaching a critical state and after
jesus had finished with the beatitudes and was
shouting something or other about turning
the other cheek the chyron graphic called out
boldly beneath him blessed are the peacemakers
and mere moments after the title changed
to something about calls for abolishing the law
of the prophets the crawl below announced
almost prophetically a new request for
additional funding to support our efforts in iraq

just when jesus was getting to the part about
serving two masters and the judgment of others
fox cut away to bill o’reilley back in the studio
who looked up into the camera shaking his head
and with an oh my god expression in his eyes
asked with some annoyance can you believe this guy
he then muttered something about how this country
needs to get back to traditional american family values
gathered himself and announced that we should
be sure to tune in later tonight for his inspiring
interview with the reverend hayes wicker
who has made some of the most important statements
to date on the biggest issue currently facing our society

the color of azaleas
paints a sea of intense pink
a signature purplish pink
that is satiatingly splattered
against a backdrop of
nascent luminescence
against the initial greens
of the coming spring

this symphony of shades
is frequently framed by
the haggard austere reverence
of mossy mobile live oaks
that drape city streets
with a quiet and subtle
dignity and so eloquently
symbolize the timeless
character and ageless beauty
of an old city seeking new birth

the azalea trail runs aimlessly
through midtown mobile
winding through countless
picturesque old neighborhoods
linking stunningly stately mansions
with humbler nearby cottages
it curves in endless arrhythmic lines
of semiotic sensuousness exquisitely
exhibited in a haphazard hedge of
harmonious hieroglyphics bringing
renewal and repeated resurrection
and when easter comes early
the view from my front porch swing
explodes with sensual significations

yet the colorful azaleas
fleeting and ephemeral
mere momentary markers of
dying march quickly wither
to trodden mottled nothingness
yet are also a splendid signifier
of still emerging spring
a splash of celebrated sublimity
however brief bringing
sufficient sustenance and
spiritual restoration for
those subsequent and more
mundane months until march
returns and we find regeneration
in next spring’s sea of purplish pink
underneath the languid live oaks

This site does some pretty cool stuff with PDF files.

i wish that i were langston hughes
or even maya angelou
able to cry out for freedom
over the roofs of the world
from a position of surprising
and unaccustomed strength
but sadly i am not
for no matter how much
i read or think or discuss
no matter how enlightened i may feel
i can never fully understand
as a white poet
privileged if by nothing else
but my own whiteness
how the truth in their words
can see so well into the life of things
and so i am damned
by that same whiteness
always to be disadvantaged
always impoverished

i have always found
a fundamental difference
between white poetry
and black poetry
and i have always envied it
and while i am certainly
as guilty as anyone and
would never wish to oversimplify
it seems to me that white poetry
historically at any rate
has often tended to soar
on the ethereal wings
of imagination and philosophy
with a mission to explore
the deep and hidden meanings
of the heights of heaven
in order that poets might
as prophets or amanuenses
bring the mountaintop down
so that truth might come to be
within the reach of those
of us too blind or deaf
to write the zeitgeist of eternity
and so white poets have pontificated
throughout history on the wherefores
and whys of our existence
almost as if poets and poetry
had nothing else or better to do

african american poetry
on the other hand
has preferred to labor
with its hands in the earth
it has always done its work
in the everyday
at the dinner table
or through childhood remembrances
born out of minds too strewn
with petty cares
or while standing on
the grave of dreams
deferred from the earth’s inside
this voice of the subaltern
long subjected to the margins
has always preferred to work
down in the midst of things
where life happens
lifting truth up to the heavens
in an act of heavy praise
for there is power in pain
and strangled possibility
but there is also beauty
in the fact of blackness
just as there is poetry
in the song of a caged bird
or the lies of a mask
perhaps even more than
in the tortured thoughts
of an overly pensive prince
or an overwrought
ideological wasteland

yet while it is indeed a privilege
to ponder life’s mysteries
by deconstructing the semantics
of our social discourses
even in a vain hope that
by revealing and reversing
historical and hierarchical binaries
they might dry up or explode
it is a privilege wrought
with hidden costs and effects
that we are taught not to see
and while many might argue
that poetry should be above
the baseness of politics
and while there may well be
a richness to those arguments
there is also a whiteness
silently blinding us to the life of things

it’s been over seventy years
since sinclair lewis prophetically
declared that when fascism
comes to america it will
come wrapped in a flag
and carrying a cross
i fear it is now come
i fear a time is at hand
when so-called traditional
values are forging false
consciousness through
a unifying divisiveness
of righteousness and fear
through the impious and
appalling dissemination
of supremacist discourses

a time is soon at hand
when there will be no one
left to speak for those of us
not white enough man
enough conservative christian
american enough and especially
those simply thoughtful enough
to know the difference between
our national history and our
national myth and to ardently
resist the subtle and seductive call
of these new values
the traditional fundamental
sacred christianamerican
values of the new nationalism

“Black voters do not support the Republican Party
because conservatives have never supported them.
--Leonard Pitts Jr.

i.

talking politics in the south
is just like racist whispers
in the north you have to
always be wary that
someone might overhear

and that is why poems are
not supposed to be political
they should be about
bigger things less petty
things the kind of things
that matter for all time
but even when a poem achieves
those lofty goals it can never
escape its own politics

this is not because
those politics are on
the wrong side but rather
because absence of politics
is merely an illusion
politics are always invisible
when they are yours

and in our society
that tends to mean that
when something is devoid
of politics it only means
that it simply a product
of a conservative politics



ii.

we are told it’s
all because they
hate our freedoms
and so we must
go over there
to fight for them

while back at home
we silently sit back
seemingly unaware
that as we are winning
freedom for a country
that doesn’t want any
part of our version
of liberty or justice
we are not interested
in fighting for them

and all around us
the media are merging
and the schools are
standardizing and all
the messages that shape
our consciousness are
becoming progressively
increasingly homogenized

and we fail to realize that
this new figure of patriotism
is an almost systemic process
where faith and factoids
tease us out of thought

our teachers are being
taught what to think and
what to teach instead of
how to think and how to
teach students to think

our talking heads are
becoming one voice
increasingly seeming
like an american pravda
carefully constructing our
collective consciousness



iii.

a good friend once
argued that everyone
in the bush administration
had read their foucault
of course they had he said
vehemently arguing that
they were intimately
familiar with foucault’s
important work on
social discourse and
the prison-panopticon

another friend once
suggested that southerners
are very much entrenched
in an enlightenment ideology
and while i've always agreed
i'm not so sure that the same
isn’t true for most americans
when we consider the timeless
power of our jeffersonian ideals

and yet it would also seem
that the modernist constructs
of hegemony and ideology as
false consciousnesses of control
are still very much in play here
however the more subtly
sophisticated foucauldian notions
of power and the shaping forces
of discourse would not be likely
to flourish if for no other reason
than we would want to reject
their frenchness for freedom

plus i could never quite believe
that the current administration
and its outdated metaphysics
and conceptions of truth
could ever accept or employ
such a postmodern philosophy
into the design machination
and dominion of its policy

besides bush wouldn’t know
how to pronounce foucault
if it were boldly brought
before him all spelled out



iv.

there used to be a
myth of the melting pot
where all americans
of various nationalities
and cultures would
come together as one
america
but then the new
concoction began
to darken and some
groups couldn’t melt
at all so we changed
our minds and went in
search of a new metaphor

first we tried a tapestry
and then found that a quilt
seemed more democratic
and more genuinely
american
but for some reason
it just didn’t catch on
so we had to settle
on a salad bowl
a rich and diverse
combination of flavors
bound together with
a nice rich ranch dressing

but now we’ve
decided it is better
to be color blind
to fail to see or
at least deny seeing
any difference at all
which is an interesting
return to the melting pot
a brilliant attempt
at a mystical alchemy
that will bind all together
in an alloy of ideology
all in a blind hope
that if we include
the entire spectrum
all the colors combined
together will hopefully
somehow still shine white