9.11.9

It was neoliberalism; it was globalization. It was the hollowing out of the middle classes, rising inequality. It was men, white men, who couldn't take the fact that women had jobs, didn't need them so much. They could get sex anywhere now. It was the world turned upside down with blacks dominating sports, with blacks getting the vote (and even their own president, goddammit). It was the gays, the baby-killers. 

It was the declining sperm count, all them high-rise towers crowding out the sun's beautiful natural light. 9.11. The whole world is nothing but a sea of numbers. Those financial wizards in Babylon, with all their hocus pocus and unreal minds, they be the ones that got us here. 

We ain't great any more. I want you to know that. The inner cities are being taken over by the jungle, the Chinese..did I mention them? The old yellow peril sneaking up on us like that, the two-timing snake-belly Fu manchus. It was all that; it weren't none of that.

It was Ming, it was some towel head in a desert or a thousand foot cave under the earth plotting the destruction of our beloved country. Old Europe. Faggots and Queers. The elites and them so-called liberals with all their fancy culture and media outlets; it was the Silicon Valley hipsters making money out of nothing, without an honest day's work to show for it. It was those pointy-head academics telling us we was no good, nothin' but white trash coz we ain't read no book. Well, we socked it to them all, just likes I said we would and now you ain't smiling. We're going to take you down, down, down so you can feel the heat we been feeling all this time. I  know you don't like it, but that's how the dice have rolled my friend and the simple, god-fearing folks have spoken and they're saying it, bright and clear: Fuck you, buddy! 

~~~

Meanwhile, the world carries on spinning on its axis in this beautiful wide space. The old sway of the earth returns, life goes on. The old ancient light filters through the trees as it always does in November. Peasants working on the land or in the city start fires and it stings your eyes so that someone from a distance would think you are crying for no reason. Is that a way of living? 

What happens to the old clouds, the sea left behind by the new wave? 

But I write to calm your nerves, my friend. Have a cinnamon roll, get some sleep.

A whale was swimming near the coast last night. No-one saw it, it was a kind of rumour and only the kids really believed it. I was in a deep and heavy sleep at the time. I stretched out my left arm at an angle, like a stone, or like a stone imagines. The rest of me still in the dreamworld. Where has my life gone? I move stiffly, wake up in a dream. Your name is in the air. In an hour they'll sing this song, drunk in forgetfulness but I will have come to my senses.

The internal sunset
after the darkness
has stopped moving.

I remember sitting on a bench, late into the evening, the stars nearly lost in the blue of the sky. Sitting there like an old man already, watching so many things pass you by..the long-legged women in short skirts, for example. And not even Hercules could move me from that bench. At a certain time in your life the clothes fit, the coffee in your hand, the wind in your hair, a closed book by your side give a semblance of timelessness. Here you sit, in late Fall, and God clearing away the leaves in my heart. November is a time for forgiveness.

But the whale, the whale, the whale.

The whale looking sideways,
hiding a woman in those eyes.

Sit right there, through the evening, each hour becoming more like a ghost under the soft moon. This life under the trees breathing world. What shape is the human heart?

I dream a lot and sometimes I see you. Once on a moored ship, under artificial lights and all that empty blue ocean. Your smile like the rains that flood our time on earth.

[His heart was clear on one point:
he knew whom he loved.]

It goes on.

Love, morning, stars
blue now in the 
continuing lighting
of the heavens.

Don't tell me what you know is true.

Here, my hand is loose, my heart is dark. A whale was swimming near the coast last night. I think I missed it but heard its sad song in my central dream.

{Lines from Joseph Ceravolo}