Three Poems Against Tucker Carlson & White Supremacy

REPLACEMENT: THE TUCKER CARLSON VARIATIONS

I

Tucker Carlson sold his heart

During a boring meeting in New York

Distant are the days when

He would watch goldfinches

In the 1970s La Jolla sun

Before he became “Tucker Carlson” on TV

II

He seeks a replacement

For his heart

But for now only has

The chittering laugh

Of a creature reeling yellow-eyed

Beneath a bad moon

III

Or Tucker's heart was lost slowly

Fading away reducing

Something vicious said for a dime

Something cruel ok'd in his mind

Always another ladder to scale

Or cracked bell to chime

IV

Tucker Carlson stays

One step ahead of something

He doesn't know quite what

Nothing a glib quip

A droll look cannot solve

He thinks

V

Or Tucker Carlson's heart

Suddenly vanished poof!

This can't be real he thought

Hearts don't

Just disappear

He thought

A GUY IN HIS LIVING ROOM WATCHES

TUCKER CARLSON ON TV

Here they come

Women and children marching

Down the dusty road

Fleeing one oblivion

For another

Riding on the tops of trains

Or inside boxcars

Camped out at a border

Waiting

Dislodged from history

Like tree branches broken off

And found on

The river’s edge

No climate-failed crops

No AK-47 Made In USA

No ballot box mishap

Or ambitious general Trained in Georgia

Or coke sniffed in Manhattan

"I'm the king of the world"

None of the Marine invasions Stacked up in the 20th C.

Like a teetering tower of grenades

Is why this is happening

We are agents of history

We forge the new reality

Though the consequences Are not ours

After each of our gestures

Of Odyssean will

Of commerce

The line of history is cut

We are beyond

The dynamic of return

This we deliver to them

For them to endure and grow stronger

It is like a gift in that way

To be more like us

We will turn them away when they arrive

Thirsty and worn by the elements

Each historical moment

Appears in the field of time

As a firefly appears in the night

Glowing and disappearing

Unbound and gone

TUCKER CARLSON IS TEARING DOWN

MY FATHER'S MIND

Tucker Carlson is tearing down

My father's mind

Hannity hammers holes in his heart

Laura Ingram lays laurels of ignorance

All around him

Dread fools they are who say one thing

While they dig pits to bury the bones

Of the old Americans

They lead into the forests

Of charred trees and stupidity

People like my father

Who barely made it

Out of the 1940s

Sleeping six kids to a room

Skipping rent if it had to be

Roxbury Boston was too hot in the forties

He made it into his eighties

Now crazy men and women

Yell at him

In the Milwaukee setting sun

Saying they can make it right

They don't even know

What happened

Tucker Carlson Is Tearing Down My Father's Mind

Tucker Carlson is tearing down

My father's mind

Hannity hammers holes in his heart

Laura Ingram lays laurels of ignorance

All around him

Dread fools they are who say one thing

While they dig pits to bury the bones

Of the old Americans

They lead into the forests

Of charred trees and stupidity

People like my father

Who barely made it

Out of the 1940s

Sleeping six kids to a room

Skipping rent if it had to be

Roxbury Boston was too hot in the forties

He made it into his eighties

Now crazy men and women

Yell at him

In the Milwaukee setting sun

Saying they can make it right

They don't even know

What happened

Fascism, More Than Anything, Is...

Fascism, more than anything, is a form of miserabilism. No ease, no joy, no kindness. All is eternal vigilance & suspicion... because the devil is lurking. No release - only a pinched, bitter wariness. Swirling hatreds: a foul stew of disappointment & acrid longing. Night without end

A Portrait of the Artist in Bank Statements

Fifty years of bank statements

annotated

a portrait of the artist

each debit credit overdraft

a decision about

time freedom creativity

the dream of community

longing for wild nature

the mad grieving

of its disappearance

each debit credit overdraft

a tale of love rage recovery

of the obliterated self

big numbers never reached

that's ok he thinks

(raccoon by Virginia Warwick)

Days in Moscow, 2022

Am I a fool, a churl? Do they see me as a sulk or a coward? They question me. I stop them at a distance of 20 feet: Germs abound. They sit at the end of a giant table and look ridiculous. I make them wait hours for my arrival. They understand what this means... I am aging, waning. No, I mustn't say that. In judo, I flip men far younger than me down onto the hard mat. I weave through phalanxes of men on the hockey ice and drop goals into the net. Untouchable. I have grown old. Distance. I require distance. And silence. Days passed in suites of rooms. I am seen only by the fading northern sunlight and the housekeeper, properly vetted. I speak to people through screens. But they are not as smart as me and they embarrass themselves before me. Loneliness? At times. People can be useful. I want the best for myself, which is the best for my country. Does that sound believable? Ha ha. I am the man in time who walks beside the river, in the shadow of palaces, thinking. I understand greatness. I understand sacrifice and terror. Perhaps there is no greatness without sacrifice and terror. I bring forth terror, but the sacrifice is not mine to make. Sacrifice is not made by great men, but by those he conquers. And those he commands.

Days of '22

He sits at an ornate banquet table, but there are no guests. No one drinking wine. No one to tell an off-color joke. There's just the man wearing a suit. He once had the tragicomic face of a beautiful clown from a Jim Jarmusch film - the sunken eyes, the slightly pouted lips, the blank expression that says, "Fired from another job, I'm walking home. I should be sad, but I remember a song by Brecht and Weill and I notice a bird on the telephone wire taking in the sun." There are no guests at the table, but there are attendees. Two officials sit far at the other end. The man thinks: "We can't even hear each other. Should I yell or just mumble in my monotone? They don't really care what I say. They look white as sheets, in any case. I need more coffee. I could have been on stage -- falling down, getting up, slapping the dust off of my pants. Saying mysterious lines by Chekhov. I have the eyes for it. Or had. They were once so lively, like Lopakhin's, 'I know exactly the potential of the people around here. They have the potential to lie. They have the potential to deceive. They have the potential to charm. They’ll change nothing. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I lie awake thinking, My God! You've given us so much. Huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.' "

"Ray Donovan" and the Patriarchy

Ray Donovan won't be one of my favorite shows. I'm going to try to stop watching it after one season. It is bleak and brutal. It is, however, an effective portrayal of how the patriarchy manages to induce grinding misery even in men, the beneficiaries of the sexist order. The patriarchy oppresses women by limiting - even seeking to eliminate entirely - their agency and power, imposing on women the most constrained and reduced identity possible - that of a unpaid domestic servant with no rights and the opportunity to be perceived as either a Madonna or a (sexist epithet). The gender caste system permits men power and agency, but demands of them that they limit their emotional spectrum to aggression, dominance, the absence of vulnerability and very limited intimacy with family and friends. In many cases, as in the Donovan family, not even sadness is permitted. No grief allowed. The men learn they must bury their pain with drugs and alcohol, with fighting and often with the oppression of women - per the design of the wretched system.