For Comrade Malcolm
the false prophet will screw with your head daily
an image of desperate unknowns:
the anonymous taxpayer
who would like to take offense
on behalf of those offended,
the popular victims of the day.
his face is caked with muted flesh
and grinning ivory teeth
he nods with sympathy to the jobless
but can offer no work
he turns cold on the youth,
“innovate and get a job
and get a life too”
and all the while, he repeats the mantra,
“Look How Far We’ve Come!”
but the Grind goes on, despite him.
the secretary will type
the factory worker will strike
but neither can taste any Free
in free trade.
the bus driver will bus
the newsmen will make news for every seated person
as the students bargain with the bankers
to negotiate their debt
and cancel their dreams.
the doctors will doctor
the teachers will teach
the businessmen will do business
while the dark-skinned are executed publicly on video
and the poor have to rage to remove the lead
from water that eats through metal
as it flows through aging pipes
in apartheid cities.
but the Grind goes on, despite him.
and Change comes, the Fruit from all those broken bodies
and as people say, “Now, surely, is the time. We’ve had it!”
the false prophet says, “No,
we should move slowly and wait for a more convenient time.”
The Gag Order
Did the sculptor who made Justice
a blindfolded woman
have a joke at our expense?
the elevated scales of unbiased balance,
the sword at her side:
more the two dimensional things
from the worn pages of fairytales
than the metaphors of a sculptor
are the gown and the trinkets meant
to be the future,
the hopes of a civilized people?:
that she will swing the
sharpened edge of justice
in the right direction?
the steel as true to its target
as the archer Apollo
his golden chariot traversing the heavens
and the Light
warming every face
as it falls towards
sunset?
but can you doubt today
that Power takes its pleasure
from the womb of Justice?
for, dropping all pretension and
feigned virtue,
the scales and the sword disappear
though the blindfold works well for the kink:
her clothes torn away, he places
a sweaty palm over mouth and nose
and then takes what he wants
with a notion
that the tears
are simply her misunderstanding
Steve is an urban planner living in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. His poems and short stories focus on the bizarre and irrational forces that animate society and what we call ‘nature.’ His published work has appeared in Poetry Quarterly (Fall 2016).
