World Series
“That's
where the economic and political empowerment of the developing world--the ‘rise
of the rest’ as I call it--comes in, . . . .”
Fareed Zackaria
Pitched
until the mantle collapsed,
the
two trophies disappeared beneath
jet
engines and 3000 bodies.
iPhones
in hands, “Why me?”
stepped
from taxi cabs in suits
and
shoes that shine. In league,
the
world without a New York City
suffered
schadenfreude in the dark.
Team
America cried foul, and alarmed
referees
chased the remote control pilot
and
the drones into caves. A decade
later,
bronze testicles wreathing
Wall
Street melted into tears
for
the taxpayer robbed by bankers,
and
Asia jumped the starter gun
when
airlifted cash on pallets landed
a
baton. A relay circles the Earth.
The
rest that rises in steel
and
glass sees nothing to learn;
the
sun casts light just so.
Western
State Penitentiary
Entering
the prison yard
by
way of the womb
and
leaving only as the fertilizer
for
another civilization, first
the
inmate toddles the grounds,
Columbus,
Magellan.
He
conquers his mother’s reach
and
his father’s nature,
while
planting his standard in the hands
of
convicted murderers and rapists.
To
ease his Atlas shoulders,
the
natives prod him to where
the
birds soar above a hut:
He
has since flapped his arms
to
the thought of freedom.
Leading
his private expeditions
to
death’s wall and to the curly locks
of
the electrified mob,
he
returns to the promises
iron
balls deeded in the dust,
to
the gates from which he came.
In
the body salt on the grounds
beneath
him, he tangles his feet
in
longitude and latitude
so
that he may eat where beyond
the
topsoil traps for millennia
captured
claws and paws.
Upon
the mesh of rooted bones
he
lumps himself, a stone
for
crows, exotic dreams, and crimes
that
only demise forgives.
Sulphur River
Review
88
Anthem
From
the mountains of wheat
to
unmined coasts of milk and money
thoughts
are empty of wailing bellies.
The
air is grimy with snacks and booze
on
the fat that belches townhouse and ranch
and
movement cripples a creeping hand
while
rocketing chains and expensive pain.
Among
cropless bowls and wilting bodies
wall-to-wall
living rooms a moment away are dragged
but
not a kernel is shaken from wallpaper eyelids
left
with magazine pinups selling soap.
In
the churches of cones, gingerbread, and beans
the
dieting and lonely gathering mid-week
cover
their mouths with bored hands
and
cups of decaf coffee.
Grand Street 86
City
Welfare
The
sky is threadbare these mornings.
When
the horizons are put on,
the
sun is out at the elbows.
Patches
of haze, dirtying,
wrinkling
the fabric of everything,
tear
at hearts, the cowhides till pennies tinkle
down
streets to save undeveloped land
of
millionaires. When the occupants of the planet are
at
their brightest and buildings
are
hunching, everyone thanks each other
for
their contribution.
Then
the civilization exposes itself
to
the evening wind, and vagrant shreds
of
blue and gold are blown
like
kisses around city squares.
New Letters 84
"World Series” is a poem from my collection Americana, forthcoming in 2014 from Press Americana. It is not about the Boston Red Sox, but an accounting of the fear of the international and economic threats that has taken hold in this country since 9/11, and that has made the idea of a post-American world possible. The fear instilled by Islamic terrorists was used to advantage by the Bush administration to cow the American population. To this day, workers don’t have time to be furious with government or banks or at having been duped by the economic elite. People are working two and three jobs to keep what they haven’t lost already. The lure into consumerism in the 1990s was countered with the fear of international terrorism and the terror of debt. A large segment of the population is as easy to manipulate as FOX News wishes. The poem "World Series" was composed after the manuscript was announced the winner of the Americana Prize, specifically for this book and brings the collection current. The other work in Americana spans decades of writing, mostly dating from the 1980s, a handful from the 70s. In 1980, I embarked on two projects. The first was to write poems that were “snapshots” of Americana: Diners (what was left of them), gas stations, automobiles, tenements, strip malls, etc. The second project was to explore whether Arnold Toynbee’s assertion that civilizations become so when they meet challenges with a successful responses. Since then, the collections came together and as a whole explores culture in America with Arnold Toynbee’s theory in mind, reminding us that we are already living in the “post-American world,” a time for the “rise of the rest” as Fareed Zackaria has phrased it. It seems to me to represent Americana as an artifact. [Among Rich Murphy's previous books, Voyeur is the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award.]
-- Rich Murphy
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