Today, at my local Walmart, a big ass red Ram heavy duty truck, decked out with Trump pictures, the Rebel flag, the good old Nazi Iron Cross. So, the following rant burst forth, like a pimple that's gone green and infected, and it's particularly pointed at the MAGA infection that this country and our Constitution can not abide with.
You Dirty MAGAS!!! â A Monologue in Fire and Fig Leaves
by Stonewall-Jackson Collins
Not ratâratâs too noble. Rats survive, they adapt, they donât strut through the world swinging iron crosses like cudgels and rebel flags like leashes.
No, you wear your hate like a hand-me-down suitâcreased, faded, and passed from grandfather to grandson like itâs some sacred family tradition.
Iron crosses on your bumpers, Confederate rags on your porchesâhistoryâs losers clinging to their symbols like children to broken toys.
You dirty MAGA.
You parade your blood-red hats like priestly vestments, mumble âJesusâ with tongues soaked in spittle and scripture you never bothered to read.
Jesus wept.
Jesus loved.
Unconditionally.
You?
You paste conditions to your love like caution tape to a crime scene. Love the fetus, not the mother. Love the soldier, not the refugee. Love the straight, the white, the God-fearingâbut only your god, and only if He looks like He votes the way you do.
You dirty MAGA.
You chase money like it's manna, like it's spice, like itâll save your soul from the hell you're building brick by brick.
You whisper âmoralsâ but pump your fists to predators in power.
You cry âfreedomâ while dragging books into bonfires and banning thought like itâs a virus.
You dirty MAGA.
Your candidates are carnival barkers, your ethics a tax shelter, your gospel a grotesque parody of grace.
You drape yourself in the flag and call it love, but itâs a shroud for what you killedâcompassion, truth, decency.
You shit-talk the poor while praying for blessings.
You ride into town on high horses, hooves stomping on anyone below your boots.
So fuck your symbols.
Fuck your gold-plated grifters.
And fuck the horses you rode in onâmay they find better riders, with hearts that beat and hands that build instead of burn.
You dirty MAGA.
You are not patriots. You are not prophets.
You are the smoke in the temple.
The moneychangers at the altar.
The wolf, not in sheepâs clothing, but in a red hat and flag cape, howling about freedom while gnawing on its bones.
'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start the bidding for me?"
"A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two?
Two dollars, and who'll make it three?"
"Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for threeâ¦" But no,
From the room, far back, a grey-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loosened strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
As a caroling angel sings.
The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.
"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?
Two thousand! And who'll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice,
And going and gone," said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand.
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
"The touch of the Master's hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd
Much like the old violin.
A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine,
A game â and he travels on.
He is "going" once, and "going" twice,
He's "going" and almost "gone."
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbirdâ
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
Screw spring.
I'm the only thing not blooming.
The arrowhead plant, so carelessly plotted,
is growing godammit.
Even the jonquils,
brought for one dinner,
are not quite dead.
Under the bed
the dust is as thick
as wool on spring sheep,
which are undoubtedly
grazing where
grass is growing
at an enviable rate.
Screw spring.
My boyfriend's taken
to getting up early.
He goes out
to see plants
pushing their way
out of the ground,
and flowering,
and sits by some chartreuse tree
in the sun, breathing air
as sweet as berry wine,
watching girls pass.
Their faces are rested
from sleeping alone all winter.
Screw spring.
I wish it were winter,
when the world's
this one room.
These walls, this bed
do
not
grow.
Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.
But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.
He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.
You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.
But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.
To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.
Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.
Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.
Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
Easter If this were a man if this man were poisoned if phosgene invades the man inhales the phonograph issues broken sanded washed if this were a man and his photogravure his image etched scratched came to my life representing life coloured measuring light walked and spoke eyes shining and alive I was convinced if a man came buckling up from the hide seasoned cured had rotted in his blanket at night if my man had steamed like Jesus in a cave delivered a man a philosophy a phobia a blue knuckling voice sang and cried warbling bloody if this man died in 1914 in a war he inhaled and he curdled down into himself resurrected his death flocked his tall tall tree his reverse breath dimpled his reverse breath his cheeks collapsed livid purple as his eight day rock and his sap let loose if this man had sap he was then wrapped loosely and tied whitely if this were a man his burning watermark remains his bearded water stamp remains
Here rise to life again, dead poetry!
Let it, O holy Muses, for I am yours,
And here Calliope, strike a higher key,
Accompanying my song with that sweet air
which made the wretched Magpies feel a blow
that turned all hope of pardon to despair
