On Tyranny, Part 1

Anne Waldman

In Wilderness

    populace of

inert things

when God had a style

status quo

& new testament females

 Hung about

premises

  invisible to many

Necks of the mood.  But desired

as intellectual

      movers

dames of the cosa nostra

the Jesuit

friend said  when I worry

I mark it a handbell choir

     just down the venue
 There was a mood about it

       And why

Ask for: do we die like this?

   improvisation?

wanted some will, some way

or an agnostic avenue

When you want power

& a Gregorian chant comes up

like sonority

but

bullying people

   & with a solidarity you can’t name

     What is it

YOUR TRUTH?

You just want to vanish

so young in the game

You don’t want tarnish

Or to tarnish

 ripping the    takers ‘ words apart

             numbers games

gambling with lives

everyone thought a better time

                sharing versus  quid pro quo

safe haven

     papyrus

I could wear blue fingernails

Token to the “aside” kulchur

        In this “hood”

  scribbling though glasses

looking up

 large and lazy eyes

               what do you know of Kabbalah

satanic mills

of societal mores or aims

          building the post- post war norm

could never then

again

be

     Little Italy

norms in war was bygone

rather scams or just say “easy “

Your own mind needs angels

        what is this world so crafty about?

what do these goons “have on” everyone

                      makes everyone crumble?

              the essence of grab, tours of hell

needs be cruel, new world maps revision

harm and scorn from

       robber baron wannabes         

As ideology and abstractions of identity

wait their turn

go nowhere?   coast thru a Yuga?

live in the 21st century we’ll all be migrants soon

But once obsessed with cereal boxes

  & studied many a “homily”

       a contest or guessing game

(Do you remember Dale Evans?)

 alternate reality, purer things

     out west

Went that way, mountains

Seminary life

 coupons to stardom

Got baptized in the Library Temple

                  successful manifestation

                  of a baby woke by

poet’s prophet’ s power

     Landscape: a school of poeisis

 She took the timbrel in her hand

as all women do and shook it around

  saying this is my ur-sound

poetry!

bottling up culture

& imagination of the

mercurial

dakinis

not a Happy mix

                    was later a given

and

yoginis too

spirits of

the doorway

set under skin

at you

a force never abandon

       no humor in the take down

nothing in common

    with
 

                   rages

 meant ragged

Coyote stuff

 & you could manage that too

faking please to get the predator off

the

      body

the new American poetry

 utopian tact of pure love

 hadn’t

                       taken this into account

                 new world order 

had a detour

sexual textures

        so there were imposters after all!

giving it out for free

              freedom’s

eternal handshake

suffragette

  fails on the gloaming

flails in Eld time

wandering in wildernesses

nursing children

         a Miriam at the crossing

   Hagar moving along

daughters of Lot

Delilah

humanesque notions

     in heart               brutal too

wait to be ostracized

computer in action mode you get jitters around

kid, kid you with me?

the    O Man you could take a fragment of

a dram

expand

write a villanelle

   and

safe for

predicaments & prophecy?

 Always escape hatching

             for a

lover’a hand not so dangerous

how do

you know that

on the

muffin    pull down

shale

          the auditory imagination

decides civility

shadow of lost art

crime syndicates

                                     or without dualistic view of Nature

or without a nemesis reality

in every step

this is the ugly face of the fascist prize!

eagle knows the sky

                        mole knows the pit

watery weeds know gravity

 & forests

within walls on the “within” of empire know themselves

     burning

announce self a builder of the wall of Uruk

                     within myself? Who cares?

Sylvan

         Sibilant

  Cybelle of Asia Minor

 swollen with abundance

     Lady of Malta

Venus of Laussl

Is this why we are here, came form afar

To witness this mockery

within

     A brim of testosterone

                   civilization

scorned in the name of your brutality

                    O plunderers

give it up for this wicked time

impregnate in the depths of caves

           sacred

mandala only to shrink again

as prehistoric artists do this 

    with pictures of

wild animals  slice into women

   plunge

into gloom

        or ram

into crevasses 

       in. detention center                    where sleepers reside

  out of hunger at the rim

for identity

                 
you were a hacker in a partial life

where’s the glitzy façade now?

under doing

     uncasing
one
American day

at

a time

wild temple dancers

messengers

   of ambiguity

twilight world &

encryptions

        from a polytropic dream

cunning the way we nuance

We have the snare on safekeeping

Being Tested

     here

From dirt realms of

confusing polarity

how cover up

a blood run

we have bare stars now as coverlets

the nomad still resists

  pleasure in the glen of herself

how

survives

the
birth

               demolition

information warfare

 collusions infect

truth leaflets tossed down

an afterthought

            supple ripples of creed 

& tips go bitchy

stalling for sun rise

it’s dark, go sit with yourself in curse corner

it’s

 burying time

         in the floaty nerves

fissures mapping lost gardens of love.