— I —
Tables sag with provender
Prime ribs, suckling pigs, purple pomegranates
Chewed-on, puked up, wasted detriti
Litter the Persian carpets, lounging, waiting not caring
Whisked up by a brown man in a white coat
Armed with dustpans and broom
Club chairs and sofas gleam with silk and gold fabric
Pilfered from global’s trades
Champagne–sodden linen
Saturates scattered lines of mirror-razor blow
Gilded pillars disguise rebar-enforced concrete,
The charade ascends to false ceilings
Silent for the time
While the palace king lies sniffing and twitching
Thumbing dumb obscenities into the dark world’s cyberspace
Further down the highway
The White House slumps with fatigue
Gardens frozen over
Random shutters flapping against shattered hand-blown glass
Inside, the snow has drifted
Across the marble carpet
The creeping frozen whiteness stains
Cherry wood antiquities
Ignorance bleaches cursive parchment documents illegible
Wind blows through the oval offices
Banning compromise
While snarling red hyenas
Gnaw on history’s broken bones,
An American nightmare.
— I I —
‘Way back in America
A youngster lay awake
Pivoting from romanced dreams to a new now
Curious about what led to his life
The prairie locomotive
Rolled across the fruited plain,
And Abraham Lincoln conducted civil discourse
with leaves of grass
Poets, thugs, and novelists
Scribbled burning narratives
Of hardscrabble love and
Cowardly war’s abandoned bravery
A young reader soaked up an America that came before
And dreamt it out again
Embracing the raucous paradox of the well-told lie
And the talking union’s hard-won wisdom
When all across America
The music came alive
From rock and roll to blues
From jazz to Appalachia’s ballads, reels and waltzes,
Laughed and cried over tuned steel
Stretched tight across strutted wood and banjo-fretted mule skin
He devoured the tales told,
History’s lies, fiction’s truths
And learned to play the tunes
Not knowing that
In time’s short run, attenuated only by youth,
Fiction’s eager songs and history books
Would toss ecstatic new dreams against real-world necessity,
Projecting the unjust, accelerating present
Onto the blurred, misrepresented past,
A breathless new awareness
Born from the plowed prairie sod of an early American Dream.
— III —
Reverb’s echoed decibels bounce down the Fillmore hall
Dancers spin in galaxies around a mirrored ball
Lenses from the balcony, the Hindu Vishnu’s eye
Conjure up goddesses of peace and war —
Bangkok hooker children, contorted napalm flowers,
Rattled frightened soldiers
One boy’s helmet shouts MEAT IS MURDER from flimsy camouflage
Vishnu dreams of dawn and flings the dancers’ galaxy across the bay
Dropping freaks in random droves on Oakland’s great highway
Staring up at concrete walls,
Built by grateful workers who now must watch their children bundled off to war
The building that once housed public worth, now charnels sanctioned death
Vishnu dreams of morning light, they listen for the roar
Silver buses stuffed with blue-jeaned, chino’d boys
The convoy halts, a snorting concert of air pressure
Doors fly open and the Government Issue (G.I.) boys
Step off the murder meat express
Beyond Vishnu’s dream, a green gate rolls aside
A square black open maw commands
form a single line, it squawks / fall in / form a single line…
Dancers rush the pig enclosures
Vishnu’s sleeping breath flows over the dueling choruses,
Hell no, they whisper, nobody goes / hell no nobody goes / hell no nobody…
Form a single line / fall in / form a single line…
Sleeves rolled high on biceps, the G.I. draftees stand stock still, listening…
Hell no nobody goes / hell no nobody goes / hell no nobody…
Form a single line / fall in / form a single line…
The Government Issue boys cross the street, first a trickle, then more, first a walk, then run
Vishnu finds the dancers braced to take the blows
She dreams the boys surround freaks and dancers with embraces.
As they stand together, the band begins to cry
Hell no, nobody goes / hell no nobody goes / hell no nobody…
At the bottom of the fortress, the tic tac pig squad shouts bullhorn warnings
Order you to / order you to / order you to…
Disperse! In the name of the people!
Protestors slap knees, draftees flip birds,
“We are the people dammit. We are the people, are the people!”
On that day, Vishnu dreams and nobody goes to the tower
No scared, no angry, no patriotic boys,
No rag-tag, torn-shirt, tear-gassed army in the street,
Nobody goes, nobody goes, nobody goes
Ten days later, back asleep, Vishnu floats the dancers over mountains and prairies and forested hills to Arlington, the Pentagon.
They build a penta galaxy surrounding power offices, the asymmetry of fives,
The dancers dance and Shiva dreams the granite mass uprising,
Tearing plumbing roots and ragged wires, defying gravity,
Its ugly pimpled backside floating upward, a tumbled humpty dumpty
Inside embedded war rooms, Old white men wept and lifted phones
To put an end to war.
# # #
Charles DegelmanWriter, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles. He's also played a lot of music. Degelman teaches writing at California State University, Los Angeles.
Degelman lives in the hills of Hollywood with his companion on the road of life, four cats, assorted dogs, and a coterie of communard brothers and sisters.
Such a wealth of colorful images, and such a vivid contrast between the post-apocalyptic vision of the first section and the grassroots dream of the second. Write on!
Thanks for your support, John. Got a ways to go with it, but glad it makes sense… or nonsense. I’ve got two more dreamscapes I want to add, once I get done GRADING PAPERS!
This is wonderful. It definitely makes sense. The two parts seem like entirely different poems though. The Prologue (which is also Part I? – unless there is another Part I still to be written), is dramatically, powerfully awful, the American NIghtmare indeed. Part II is beautiful, and optimistic, and exciting. Maybe that’s your point. Looking forward to the two additional dreamscapes you plan to add.
My premise is that we have many American dreams, not just the myth of post-WW II hegemony. The two parts are definitely different narratives and the headings probably blur. Looking to make the prolog discrete. Definitely a work in progress with two more dreams to be captured.
Whose dreams are these, Chas? Such different visions, such evocative writing. Where does it come from? What is your inspiration? I look forward each week to your writing. I marvel at your word choices. Can’t wait for you to be done grading papers…looking forward to the next two dreams!
The dreams, including the initial nightmare, are mine. I’m trying to present more personal alternatives to the standard post-WWII American Dream. The next two dreams will evoke dreams of positive change from my own history as a dreamer, dreams I think we share with many others. Just not about homes, cars, and Ozzie and Harriet.
Dear Charles,
It is late night and I know this poem requires several readings. Very interesting and a little confusing. I always think of Vishnu as a more peaceful god and Shiva as more of a warrior. However, still I must have missed much and will reread this again.
I loved your referencing the Fillmore(west?), I assume. I was in NY city and used to go to Fillmore east for about 2 dollars, every week we had time. All the changes we hoped to make, have not happened.
I just finished your book “Bowl of Nails” which I bought on Amazon. Hope it helps support this sight. I loved it. It reminded me so much of my 60’s and 70’s experiences and it helped me understand some of the political movements a little better. My experience with the Weathermen was not so benign.
Yes, the American Dream piece is a work in progress. Thanks for your kind words.
I have to disagree with you about the changes we hoped to make. They DID happen! Look at our world (block out the election)! Feminism, environmentalism, minority studies, alternative life styles (including energy consumption), new ways to community organize… all those things came out of the New Left and its fellow travelers. In my book, we won lots and threatened the power structure when it needed to be threatened.
I’m delighted you read A Bowl Full of Nails! And yes, it was a friendly take on the weather underground, but correct, I think, in the larger context of the story. If you’d like to leave a brief review on Amazon, you can at http://amzn.to/1DOc1x6
Charles,
Thank your upbeat response.
Charles 2nd reading, I still will visit time to time as it changes because I enjoy its breathless rhythm and the ideas take time to absorb thoroughly.
Thank you, Rosie. I read segments of Three American Dreams at a writers union meeting this weekend.
Charles that is great, wish I could have heard your reading. I always imagine that you have an expressive way of reading a story that matches your wit and irony.
All those years of acting…