Late World

the poor starve

abandoned houses slump

shops & restaurants shutter

people kill each other & themselves

cities no longer bank on madding crowds

instead of schools open everything shuts down

the second shutdown
news would tell the bad were one to tune in, log on

better the bad news of some earlier day

social code fails, positions lost

many die — mostly the ill, the old, also the healthy, the young

the slightest sore throat panics

neighbor next door keeps saying

I only do what I’m told

                                   does she not hear the echo?

no one anticipates a world where all we need do

is stay away from each other

anyone who comes too close is backed away from

the secret universe of everyone

is known to all

Coda

the necessary factor is hope

hope for an intelligent conversation

for time with family, for time when you are not

alone — the young poets are sometimes

an inspiration, they tell the hard truths of

their lives, other times they fixate on sex

or self-justification, as if we old poets don’t —

are the old humbler? we feel less hope

yet still strive for a job well done, the plants

watered because rain has not come

I attended a young-poet-led seminar

about an old poet, thirty people came,

young read some of the old-poet's poem

then tossed out learned associations

terms like citational, syntax, lyric — not

what I’d hoped, these academic terms

failed to explore or honor the work —

to end the poem a coda repeats

loveless sleepless — no one seemed to know

she lives alone, the husband she found

dead — if you are old, loveless sleepless

coda, repeat, is something you know

Cave Canem, July 8, 2020

we are three hundred looking at our screens

more than three hundred if we have family in the house

Evie looks, Major looks — we look at a large face

at a gallery of faces, at bits of rooms behind faces

Major’s books, Evie’s yellow wall

brief howling of a needy cat

no texture, no smell, worrisome pixillations & audio stutters

the poets read polished published poems

then new poems — loose, conversational, raw

what have you written since this moment began?

I know these people, they haven’t forgotten me, we are apart

we want to see each other again

it is my annual day of sobbing

I do not regret my little bout with life

Evie says I’ve only written three poems, it’s hard to focus

Major says the pressure is building

afterward, no one says that, will there be an afterward?

after silence, art will burst like a tidal wave

Killed by a Cop

the condition of black life is one of mourning

— Claudia Rankine

what’s hardest for me to grasp 

when a black person is killed

in particular, killed by a cop

is that they are dead & will stay dead

not live another day of their life

while the cop will stay alive 

& stay a cop & possibly kill more

black people while the rest of us 

stand around as if we don’t mind

if we minded, no cop would ever 

kill another black person, it’s that

simple, that plain, we would rise up 

& take those bad cops down &

if we couldn’t tell the good cops 

from the bad cops, we would

take every cop down & start over

perhaps you & I would become cops

we with our wrinkles & thinning hair

& fake joints, we would be cops

simply because we could not kill

a black person, we would die first

Silence

some lurk, others conceal part or all

of their names — behind these masks

who lies? what tug might recall

their first cry, their toddler’s grasp

at freedom, their teen’s urge to try

everything — fearless iconoclast —

plunge into sex, drugs, protest, deride

received “truth” to dare the unknown

dark & deep where danger lies

she'll find it, suffer & claim her own

indelible story, what she’ll recall

while hiding, lost, silent, alone