HUSH PRIVATE!!

"My own business always bores me to death;
I prefer other people."   - Oscar Wilde

There’s nothing private in America.
OK -- Nothing's sacred in the world.
It’s more than electronic gadgets and
falling asleep out of boredom. We
open the wounds of our saviors. You
say there are no heroes, not one face
listed on TV as a sacred warrior for
children to march to the train station
when the steam engine drove
the private lives of Jews to gas
factories and jewels collected,
once private, distributed as
an art of war to noble savages.

No, not all Germans were Nazis.
Some Americans fight for privacy.

Our soldiers open their intestines
with a dull scalpel or broken glass
with weapons of chance, to bleed
as if they mattered, but of course
the blood soaks into the Tigris
as it did long ago when Babylonia
arranged as a musical by TODD-AO
and Cleopatra running her breasts
on the Nile was not assaulted by
Marc Anthony and her child,
private, of course, became an
object of power, which is one
lesson we learn when history
stripped of ideology racks up
new balls, terror’s experiment
and the daily prayers, the call
to Mecca, Rome or Washington DC.

We say we are invisible
to the longing we feel when we
rush through the meadow, a cliché
of demons and goblins – play
toys wound up tense the spring
snaps before you have a chance
to drive it over the cliff to discover
how we open up empty boxes
to discover the personality
left behind in a gift, in a record
of the movement not of stars
but ordinary legs and arms
driven, out of control, against
some decorous weather.

We are displaced by that lie.
Every motion of the last day
recorded in pico-seconds --
as a harmonic obituary
two octaves higher than
our ears can navigate.

We are invisible again
in that choral prelude.
Nothing remains of notes
left behind after we moved
from New Orleans to Houston
and then backward to Katrina.
.

Retribution’s horse hides in stables
bound with tight gold bridles --
not necessary when the horseman
driven mad settles back
to observe the rattled horizon, --
rusted clouds driven out of text
to celebrate the birth of prophets
named by the movie makers
developed as a future project
for the preservation of fate.

Privacy lasts brief seconds
when the camera rolls alone
over centuries of newsprint,
color photos and pornography
drifting out of the cosmos.

The night stopped short --
blue light half visible as morning;
the blackguard of bitter curses
where thieves, spies and dragons
flit torches no one can see
as they copy the truth
with the barrel of the gun
and lies bleed with truth.
.

 

3-2-06