The fire this time

I sing the glory and the woe of forests in flames,

and the scorched lungs of Angelenos today and of you and of me tomorrow.

I remember the beauty of Topanga Canyon

when Judy and I would eat there half a century ago,

the crunching of bean sprouts between our teeth as Cathy gurgled beside us.

I sing my dirge for Topanga today, its coals glowing feeble orange buried beneath ash

obscured by the gloom that used to be air, its eruptions of smoke

weaving lava-like over hills and buildings, invading the noses and eyes of friends and relatives, of Kevin and Sara, Lilia and Lincoln, and Paula and Elle,

and the lungs of millions.

 

I sing shredded inside myself by emotions that blaze like forests

as I envision suburbs and forests in Maryland and Northern Virginia ablaze tomorrow

alongside the gentle woods of Rock Creek Park (where Amy and I once wandered and kissed)

as the flamethrowers of a vengeful Earth exterminate the world-killers of K Street,

White House, and Capital, and the fire-spewing lungs of the Pentagon’s Generals,

and I imagine the rejoicing of billions as they hear the news,

but I mourn the government workers and their families engulfed by this inferno,

children, men, and women like my parents, my sister, and me in a by-gone age

broiled, smothered, and baked.

 

And I sing the death-song of Ghanaians, Australians, and my friends and their children in Durban,

Buenos Aires, and Kyiv, and those who toil fifteen hours a day making chips in

Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and China, and the rice-growers of the Mekong Delta,

and the cats scrounging scraps in back alleys in Bangkok,

and the scallops, whales, and even the roaches

as buildings, wheat-fields, and forests blaze,

and rivers and oceans boil.

 

 

Freedom

(SING)

Oh, freedom!

Oh, freedom!

Oh, freedom over me!

 

(MIXED VERSE AND SONG)

South side Blacks

Oh, freedom!

 

Mississippi

Oh, freedom!

 

Puertorriquenas

Oh, freedom!

 

Palestinians

Oh, freedom!

 

Uyghurs

Oh, freedom!

 

Kurds

Oh, freedom!

 

Ukrainians

Oh, freedom!

 

Rohingya

Oh, freedom!

 

Sudanese

Oh, freedom!

 

Chechens

Oh, freedom!

 

and on and on

 

and on

 

Oh, freedom!

 

Before I’ll be a slave

 

South Bronx   Alabama   East Harlem   Ponce    Gaza   West Bank…and on and on and on

 

I’ll be buried in my grave…

 

(CHANT, perhaps as call and response by audience)

F*ck white power

F*ck American racism

F*ck imperialism

F*ck ALL imperialisms

F*ck capitalism

 

(VERSE AND CHANT)

Stokely and Kathleen yelled, echoed by Fred as he died in bed,

Black power!

Ania and Tanya cry, and Pasha re-echoes:

Slava Ukraini!

Shireen and Lara repeat, echoed by unions,

Palestine must be free!

Yolanda y Milagros cantan,

Que Bonita Bandera!

 

(SONG)

Oh, freedom!

Oh, freedom!

Oh, freedom over me!

and before I’ll be a slave

I’ll be buried in my grave

and go home to my Lord and be free!

 

 

Freedom [deleted]

News Bulletin of 2024:

NYU has released new guidance which prohibits

any protest against the political ideology of Zionism

Students!

Professors!

Citizens!

We can rest easy tonight.

Our state governments,

our campus administrators,

defend our freedoms.

We are free to denounce the

genocides

of Turks killing Armenians,

Germans killing Roma and Jews.

We are free to call these racisms

by their names,

denounce Nazi beliefs, tortures,

concentration camps.

Our leaders pass laws so our children

learn their crimes,

and learn that these victims

must be named.

 

But when [name deleted]

starves, tortures, kills

millions of [name deleted]

over decades,

then slaughters thousands of [name deleted] children

in mere months, while other thousands die

starved and diseased,

and leaders of [name deleted] call these children

animals

who should all be destroyed,

we cannot name their state,

cannot name their army,

cannot denounce their soldiers who machine gun civilians,

cannot name their soldiers who text images of headless bodies home as souvenirs,

cannot name their racist ideology

cannot name the apartheid system for which it stands,

and above all, cannot name their victims,

lest we be fired, expelled,

beaten by [name deleted]-ist mobs,

arrested and brutalized by cops,

and called anti-[name deleted]-ites

in the name of academic freedom

and [name deleted]’s civil rights.

 

Trail of Tears

 

1. Holy! Holy! Holy!

 

Walking, on this day after St. Patrick’s Day,

I contemplate the holiness of Christian nations.

All of them profess

love

charity

good will to men.

 

As a Jew, I know such Christian love,

we have lived its lash

unto the fifth generation.

 

I hear its good will in the words of my

Ukrainian friends

who tell me of the manna the Russians rain down on them

nightly from the skies.

 

And charity?

I think of Gaza and the promised food, water, medical supplies,

and the utter silence

resounding

from Christian kings, and Christian Prime Ministers

as the Zionists bar this aid from their

Gaza concentration camp,

and carpet bomb survivors

to the praise of Christian America

at how Zion sees

cease fire.

 

2. Never Again

 

I watch a genocide

muffled by the media

as Auschwitz and Treblinka died

silenced when I was a toddler,

and now, as I near the end of my days,

and Gazans sicken, starve and die,

I watch the United Nations,

that bastion of collective security to ensure

that Never Again never again occurs,

let this Death Siege progress

to its foredoomed end.

 

None of the countries

some so-called socialists praise,

not China, not Cuba, not Iran;

none of the Christian nations of Europe, the Americas,

none of them,

gives a damn.

 

When their people demonstrate,

demand action,

call Zionism what it really is,

then and only then

do these noble nations

use force—to repress

their truth-tellers,

if necessary, to smother universities

into the silence of the grave.

 

3. Spectres

 

Karl Marx once wrote of

spectres

haunting Europe,

and wrote of living labor

crystallized as a ghost

into the guns and armies of

Capital.

Today, the teeming spectres are the ghosts of

murdered Palestinians, Ukrainians, Sudanese,

and our despair at a working class that,

though huger than ever before,

has not revolted,

has not rejected its chains.

 

These spectres of today

await

the spectres of tomorrow

as climate change

lays waste to all the

Holy Nations,

all the unrevolting workers,

all the billionaires,

all the dogs and all the cats,

and every cockatoo,

and on the sandy deserts of cockroach Israel and cockroach America

the only monuments will be

forlorn chainsaws

and lonely stuttering A.I.’s.

 

4. Wholly Holy

 

But is all really so lost?

Aren’t workers, peasants, students, oppressed genders and

oppressed peoples

rebelling

here,

there,

everywhere?

 

What if we find ways to act as one

despite our fears,

despite our hates?

What if we find ways to share and think about

our fears?

and our hates?

and our angers?

 

What if we find ways to

think together? To unite our dreams?

What if we dare?

What if we form a single revolutionary spectre

to negate the destruction that rules the Earth

and to build a world of an unknown whole, a holy

solidarity?

 

 

v. 1 March 19, 2025

What lingering loyalty?

 

But what did the common people

think and say

as Theban noble killed Theban noble

and as Antigone was entombed

for trying to avert a plague?

 

Did their masters, or the needs of their

crops

keep them too busy to care?

Or befuddle them on how the Gods might send pestilence,

so they viewed a brother’s burial

as a mask

for that brother’s shame?

 

And what lingering loyalty to power

and the joys of royal pomp

kept Antigone from rousing the poor to overthrow the

tyranny,

since the people are many,

and their exploiters are few?