On the Sullen American Teen

The sullen disposition of the American teen is not a mystery:  He/She senses, looking around at the adults, that what lies ahead is a rigged game where something called "happiness" is chased, but never realized. He/She observes that well-being cannot be realized within a pressure-fueled complex consumer-driven society.  The American teen knows all of this intuitively and resents the adults above who seem to have accepted this state of affairs. Most adults that the teen sees appear as sad figures resigned to a grim fate, as cowardly & broken souls.  And this is why the teens are depressed. This is why they are rageful.  In fact, the teens' depression and anger are a sign of health. They indicate that the youth yet retain the original life spark -- that it has not yet been extinguished. Their withdrawn and often gloomy temperament should actually give us hope:  it is a form of resistance, a posture of rejection of The Lie. 

Two Movie Scenes

1. The scene in "The Departed" when Jack Nicholson as the gangster Costello sits down beside Leonardo DiCaprio as the deep undercover agent William Costagin for the first time. It is at a lunch counter in a corner store in South Boston. One of the most melancholy yet joyful songs ever written, "Let It Loose," by the Rolling Stones plays -- the ragged sounding electric guitar wavers through an effects pedal like a prizefighter bloodied but not beaten. The piano engages the guitar almost as a dance partner – a step forward, one backward, locking arms, an embrace, a release. We feel, at this moment, all the longing of these two men crystallized to a point. Each has pursued his own truth by means of a lie.

2. The scene in "Heat," directed by Michael Mann, when the criminal Robert De Niro sits down to speak with the detective Al Pacino for the first and only time. They share a cup of coffee at a large roadside diner outside of Los Angeles. We sense that there is, somehow, love and respect between these two men. It is tragic they will never be able to become friends; their destiny is to live as enemies and, we sense, to pursue the logical end of this enmity: the death of the other. Their contrasting destinies are shown in their exchange --

Pacino: Don't you want to live a normal type life?

DeNiro: What do you mean by a normal type life? Ballgames and barbecues?

Pacino: Yeah. Ballgames and barbecues.

DeNiro: No. No.

A Turning (for Kirk Hauptman)

"If it makes money, it’s good." 

As children we knew this was absurd.

We knew this afloat on our backs
Free and drifting 
For the first time alone
In cold Lake Michigan in sunlight.

They said --
The standing lamp broadcasting
Ghoul-golden light as it was pronounced -- 
To go against this  

Would cause us to be penniless
And to starve.

We accepted this 

And gradually went mad.

Years pass
As a pale car fade
Into the eastern haze and
We sense now A Turning.

We sense that we may now recall 
What we knew as children.

Sometimes I hear within the chambers of my skull

Metal girders creaking and bending,

Wailing under the weight of something impossible.

Sometimes I can see in my mind’s eye 
The beginning of the fall of a building,

And then the mid-air pause that it holds 
Before it collapses inward upon itself
In a whoosh that is both rapid 
And traceable in real time.

Kingdom of Soot

In the Kingdom of Soot

Where the beggars lie

You can fly like a lemon

Through a hole in the sky

Wander like an onion

Past the broken moon

Sleep in the shadow

Of a wooden spoon

In the Kingdom of Soot

With your ragged wand

You can draw a circle

On the black silt pond

Eat your jambalaya

From a cracked, tin bowl

Holler at the window

Like a blind black mole

Well I saw Emma

She was wringing out the wash

Hunched like a rabbit

In an old tan cloth

Pouring out the water

Tortoise shells

Knocking on the doors

She was ringing all the bells

Portrait of Cheney, Vice President

Eyes devoid of pity. The glance always sidelong, never granting direct engagement with the interlocutor. 

Though he likes the phrase, "corridors of power," he knows he operates in a realm subterranean to them. The hidden bunkers where all is preserved in a state of cleanliness and order and where the peeping eyes that pry and may discern some segment of the labyrinth cannot see. 

He knows the bombers that hum gray in the night. 

His is the joy of Iago. No folksy, cornpone drawl is needed. Leave that to the stammering, pitiful Texan. That lanky draft-dodger is the perfect side show. Such serendipity to be paired with him. 

The Vice President. And he remembers watching the MGM films 
on the Roman empire in his youth. His friends longed to be the boldly heroic gladiators and respected the swift, stunning power of the Emperor. He trained his eyes on the cloaked men, those whose faces transmitted neither fear nor pity. They would lean over and gently whisper into the Emperor's ear. Events would transpire and still no change in the gaze of the advisers. 

Song of the Beasts

If I were a lobster

On the Nantucket shore

With my shell growing thinner

On the cold ocean floor

And if I were a monarch

On my route flying south

With the milkweed beloved

A dead seed in my mouth

And if I were a coyote

Down on Michigan Ave

And the skyline arising

Was all that I had

Chorus: I’d say… (vocalizing, calling)....

And if I were a blue whale

Of the rolling dark see

And the sonar explosions

Blowing up in my ears

And if I were flying fox

On the outback so free

With the temperature rising

So my heart stopped its beat

And if I were a scallop

Sitting lonely in brine

On the pacific coastline

In the acidic tide

Chorus

And if I were a panda bear

In the forest so green

With the bamboo receding

Before my little cubs and me

And if I were a bumble bee

On the meadow so wide

With the neoinsecticoids

Getting into my eyes

And if I were an axolotl

Ina Mexican canal

Disappearing with the sunset

In a wondering spell

Chorus

And if I were an elephant

On the African plain

With a poacher approaching

Trying to desecrate my name

And if I were a mighty pine

On the Oregon hills

With the chainsaw blades rumbling

Breaking up the calm still

And if I were a hummingbird

With my beak in a rose

With the nectar turned poisonous

And my wings starting to close

Chorus

And if I were a dodo bird

Landing onto a stream

With the water a-sparkling

On the bright budding leaves

And if I were a dodo bird

In the dark windy night

Between living and dying

And waiting to take flight

And if I were a dodo bird

Flying inside the dream

Of a broken-down sailor

Trying to set me free