What Rough Beast | Poem for November 26, 2019

Michael Vander Does
The Hand You Can Shake

the lips you can kiss,
kiss.

the note you can play
play

the joy or sorrow you can share
share

we need these moments
in the midst of madness and mayhem
we need these moments

we do not know
which 13-year-old’s hand
we may never shake
what notes he may never hear
whose lips he may never kiss
we do not know
whose heart may shine
or be broken

we do not know
whose eyes may never again
never never never
never again
see a flower
break a fast

just when things seem just when things seem like just when things seem like they might like they might like they might be getting better might might might be getting a little better (not this year, but maybe last—or the year before Ferguson—or the day I got health insurance—or the night Obama was elected) a hand reaches from the dank swamp of bigotry and grabs your foot grabs your ass grabs your money grabs a gun and its vile voice bubbles up and bursts in most putrid of bubbles bursts into songs of yesteryear as it tries to steal our music to cover its covers of Dixie and Deutschland—hatred draped in images of home that never were, draped in a misdreamed malformed past of strange trees with strange fruit, draped in flags and sheets and homilies, draped in simpering tolerance and lies bigger than the universe, draped in our tears, bizarrely able to drape itself in murder and rape as if these things were acceptable—as if bathroom laws and standing for the flag and whose god? and immigration were real issues instead of a way of creating otherness as if in America in an alley a white boy with a bb gun would be gunned down as if as if as if

as if

The shot you can take
don’t

Hear this poem performed by the poet to the accompaniment of The JazzPoetry Ensemble.

Michael Vander Does is a JazzPoet and filmmaker from Columbus, Ohio. His poems have appeared in Croton Review, Negative Capability, Istanbul Literary Review, Carbon Culture Review, and Tryst, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Cap City Poets:Columbus & Central Ohio’s Best Known, Read, and Requested Poets (Pudding House Publications, 2008), edited by Steve AbbottConnie Willett EverettRose Smith. He performs trombone and poetry with The JazzPoetry Ensemble. He has received awards from the Ohio Arts Council and The Puffin Foundation West. Online at makejazznotwar.org

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