American Litany 2

American Litany 2

This is what we've built, America:
this is the machine we have made with our lives,
here the burlesque and intractable sorrow,
the prim mouth and adjustable collar,
the room at the end of the hall.
This is the machine that grinds us,
halter, hatchet, clock that rings, voices
down the long gray corridor, roads and roads,
bumper-to-bumper, we wobble but we don't fall down,
life like the promise of yesterday's bread, and gentle
the hand that feeds. And imperfect
the shame of our gratitude.

This is the actuarial revolution:
we are punched like numbered cards
in some uncounted cube,
the first of our kind,
the last of our kind,
nearly gone like the neighborhood dog
who came week after week in the dark
to party in your garbage.

We are the unlanded gentry:
we borrow, we barter the day,
eat morning as bold as Arial Black,
yet by dusk it is new times and roman.
There is so much coal in the heart of the money,
the way we own nothing until it is broken,
the way there is always less
than fifty dollars in the register,
and all the while the distant sound
of prostitutes and poolboys,
a party in a better room upstairs.
Music you can dance to.

We are fighting over scraps of food,
fighting over chairs,
your shoes, my shoes,
the shoes of the poor
and the fisherman's wife.
Shoes and a small place to walk them.
We are fighting over change
dropped carelessly
from upper-story windows.
This is the real urban warfare,
and every man turns terrorist
at last.
Because his children
have hungry children,
and there is precious little space
to hide from the unrelenting wind.

If someone brings the bread,
if someone brings a map,
an enemy may always be born.

The sky has been terrible
for too many years,
and someone has left
their clumsy thumbprints
on the forebrains of our progeny.
Let us pull up a chair
and a comforting blanket.
Let us gather by the radio,
dialing through the static
to distant, tinny voices
crying help.