Audre Lorde Knows What I Mean – 2021 in review - 7. Part Seven: "Damn him"

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Audre Lorde Knows What I Mean –

2021 in review

by AC Benus

 

“The doctrine of

‘The Strong shall Dominate the weak’

Is the doctrine of our enemies!

And we reject it.”

—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ^[i]

December 24th, 1943

 

 

 

Part Seven: "Damn Him";"Damn You";"Damn Me"

From a Time of Plague III

 

XL.

 

A BRIDGE TO THE 22ND CENTURY

 

Five Cinquains:

 

i.

His lies

Normalized lies,

Sicced a mob on Congress,

Set a cancer deep in our blood

To rot.

 

ii.

What shame

He brought to our kids;

Disgraced through all the years

They’ll grow without democracy,

Enslaved.

 

iii.

Ideas

Kill much quicker

Weaponized and tempered

In the blood of true patriots,

Murdered.

 

iv.

Big lies

Are Gops’ new norm –

Anything for power

And the taint of corporate money

To kill.

 

v.

What shame

We must live through,

Knowing they are plotting

To turn back every election

To win. [ii]

 

 

XLI.

One-Party rule is what

Karl Rove promised

And the people let slip

Into place.

 

Damn Him; Damn You; Damn Me. [iii]

 

 

XLII.

 

Kyrielle

 

“Lord have mercy . . . ”

 

Now each Gop-controlled state boldly employs

Voter suppression, with vote-stealing noise

On how “the others” stuff and cheat the count,

Knowing Repubs steal the largest amount,

For fair fights they can’t tolerate, it’s true—

Losers never can; bullies never do.

 

Like those insecure on the playground sands

Who intimidate anyone who stands

‘Tween the blameless and what they want to steal,

They push others to the ground under heel,

Mewing how they’re the ones made to suffer

As if the weak are really the tougher,

For fair fights they can’t tolerate, it’s true—

Losers never can; bullies never do.

 

Look at Hervis Rogers, arrested by

Texas Gops who claimed his race went awry

When he thought Black men could vote fair and free

In a State that screams that must never be –

The laws exist for the elite to say

Who can and can’t vote on election day;

And now Gops expand this to every place

To make of freedom a crime and disgrace,

For fair fights they can’t tolerate, it’s true—

Losers never can; bullies never do. [iv]

 

 

XLIII.

We didn’t know how good we had it

before the plague of Covid;

before the plague of Trump.

 

And do you know what?

before the plague of Covid

Both are still wreaking havoc,

before the plague of Trump

both still doing damage afresh.

 

We didn’t know how good we had it

both are still wreaking havoc,

before the plague of Covid,

both still doing damage afresh.

before the plague of Trump.

 

 

XLIV.

Hervis Rogers was made

An example:

“Your vote doesn’t matter,

Black people.”

 

Bless Him; Bless You; Bless Me.

 

 

XLV.

 

January 20, 2021

 

Inaugural Day, and no mention of us –

Not from the President;

Not from the Invocationalist, priest;

Not from the Benedictionalist, reverend . . .

Unless, we, a strong, persecuted

Minority who’ve faced burning at

The stake; we, who’ve been enslaved

By the iron band of hateful conformity;

We, who’ve been spat upon by minister

And priest alike in this so-called

“Free” country – jailed, castrated,

Institutionalized over and over and over and

Over again based on their false

Authority to ‘speak’ for God in tongues

Of fire to damn us with each and

Every malicious thought in their

Sex-addled brains . . . unless, we

Accept this Benedictionalist’s reverend’s LABEL

Of people of a “preference.”

So, no. I was not mentioned at the

Inaugural, January 20, 2021 . . . . [v]

 

 

XLVI.

 

It’s something any seven-year-old in this country

Can understand. Winning; losing; being a victor;

Being the defeated. Our culture makes sure

Every American seven-year-old knows the sting of

Dodge-ball losing; the losership of being picked

Last for any and all activities of competitiveness.

So when my Second Grade teacher, one fine

Morning, looked so sad she could cry, standing

With folded hands in front of us – her Second

Grade class – to tell us America had

Done something it had never done before: Lost

A war. Saigon had fallen in spectacular way to a

Communist dictatorship, and helicopters were

Landing as precariously as butterflies atop the

U.S. embassy in Vietnam to rescue and ferry the

Good Guys – the ones who had fought to keep

Their nation a democracy – to safety and exile,

We, the Second Grade class of Saint John the

Baptist Elementary School got it. America, the

Loser, had lost a war. Its first in one hundred

and ninety-nine years of existence.

We seven-year-olds looked at each other knowing

The world had changed that morning; changed

To the detriment of all those who might

Struggle against dictatorship around the globe.

We didn’t have to grapple with grand concepts;

We’d been reared to instantly understand

There are winner and losers among us, and at

All costs – within bounds of ‘fairness’ – one must

Strive mightily to be a winner at all times.

But. America had lost its first war, and

The victims of this loss were struggling that very

Morning to survive somehow under conditions

Too brutal to be anything but real in 1975.

 

This year, who could have imagined only

Months ago, classrooms across the land filled

With new seven-year-olds watching the

Hand-wringing of their youthful teachers standing

Before their class, telling them – or, at least

Attempting to convey the horror – of America’s

Losership. For only the second time in our

Two hundred forty-fifth year of existence, we lost

A war; a war against religious dictators

Whose only aim was to impose their will on a

Public kowtowed, confused and scared. And America?

What did we do to help? Nothing, except keep

Alive Donald J. Trump’s official policy of

Playing Surrender Monkeys to the Taliban.

Now, back after the loser lost once again

In a national election, there were some very

Adroit commentaries appearing in some very

Adroit newspapers that the Dumpster’s loser

Mindset was sabotaging the American People,

The American Republic – our way of life; our

Sense of life in a secure world; our very

Democracy – with Foreign Policy decisions aimed

To explode like assign time bombs once the

Nation was feeling good; feeling safer the nutjob

Was out of office and far removed were his

KFC-greased fingers from the levers of war and peace.

So when the public was feeling better under

Actual leadership; under an actual President,

The Dumpsterfire’s IEDs would explode to hurt

A country Donald J. Trump always, actually, despised;

Clearly he hates us for our freedoms and way of life.

It went off. BOOM! A distracted Biden Administration,

Trying to stamp out the thousand other wildfires

The Gops had weaponized to burn down the

Entire nation before they were shut off from

Power by the will of The People, let

The Repubs’ “Surrender Monkey to the Taliban”

Policy stand. What lengths the Gops will

Go to hurt anyone not their corporate owners –

The Enrons; the GMs of the world; the Chevrons –

Should be no surprise to anyone with eyes open

And watching the crisis-points around the world

They’ve fostered for the sheer ‘fear value’

They can exert over the American electorate

Decade upon decade, upon decade (anyone

Remember the “Grave Communist Threat”

Reagan’s subtropical isle of Granada supposedly

Posed to the price of milk within the Good

Ole U.S.A.? Anyone recall King Bush I using

A U.S. warship to fire point-blank into

Housing along Panama’s shore, killing hundreds

– incinerating large swaths of that nation’s capitol –

Killing people sitting down to dinner, murdered,

Burned to a crisp because the former CIA-Director-

Cum-lied-his-way-into-the-Presidency

With nothing but Willie Horton Panic, said two-

Bit dictator Manuel Noriega was somehow a

Major feel-bad threat to the price of gasoline

In the Good Ole U.S.A.?) Fear. Value. That’s

The Repub’s stock-in-trade, whether here at home

Or on shores far away where the “Others” live,

Salivating to make suburbia’s life a tiny fraction

Of a millimeter’s width less comfortable and

Pampered, and whiny-nosed with useless complaints

On “How hard life is for us here.” These are the losers

Who actually shit on their ballots so losers

Like Donald J. Trump could wipe his ass

On the United States Constitution. We’ve seen how

Much he cares about the Law. Same with every Gop

Who stood behind that so-called man. And why?

Because ours is a country the Gop Party had always,

Actually, despised; Clearly they are a seething

Mass of hate for us and our freedoms; our way of life.

So, is it any wonder such a band of dodge-ball-

Stung narcissists would sabotage the good war –

Begun by accident by Lil Bushy II so he could get

To Iraqi oil – for selfish, uncaring political

Manipulation of an overworked, underpaid,

Undereducated, highly taxed Gop-voting public?

Yes; yes; yes – a million Iraqi dead in a war

The American Gop-voting public rubber-stamped

And vomited up a trillion dollars in debt

To hand Chevron and Exxon and British Petroleum

And Royal Dutch Shell oil-contracts to keep

Pollution off the charts around the world

Forever. So, yes. Trump played surrender monkey;

Biden fell for it, and classrooms around the world

Had teachers stand up before it, telling them

America had lost only its second war in history.

 

But the horrors, the horrors, the man falling from

A jetliner’s wheel well just trying to live; just

Trying to escape the terrorist Taliban. The crush

Of thousands at Kabul airport trying, just

Trying to get their children and themselves out

Of harm’s way because they had had the

Audacity of Hope to believe democracy in

Afghanistan mattered to anyone but them.

But they were wrong, and Biden himself turned weak

The moment he stood before cameras – with a

Uselessly determined grimace on his antique,

Baby Boomer features – to say if the

Afghans can’t fight for themselves against an

Organized – China and Iran and Russia funded –

Terrorist group, there was nothing the American

People could do about it either. Except, of course,

There was. Because by this point, the few thousand

U.S. troops who had kept peace in the land easily

For a decade had tripled to nearly 10,000; so they

Very well, very easily could have held the

Country – because it’s what the educated American

Voting electorate wanted; expected – but no,

Biden said Trump had played surrender

Monkey to terrorists and there was nothing he

Could do about it – poor, little weakling –

Except watch his television like the rest of us.

Watch as frozen bodies of Afghans were crowbarred

From wheel wells of evacuation planes landed at

Ramstein Air Base in Germany carrying evacuated

Kids and their parents from Kabul. No,

Nothing he could do, he said, but live up to

The sabotage plans laid like assigns’ time-

Bombs under the Democratic Administration.

Nothing he could do but count the bodies

And billions of dollars lost in 20 years of violence

In Afghanistan meaning nothing but a return of

The Taliban and their soccer stadiums full

Of political prisoners, Christians, Queer people,

Mowed down with machineguns. Nothing. He.

Could. Do. He said.

 

It’s something any seven-year-old in this country

Can understand. Winning; losing; being a victor;

Being the defeated. Our culture makes sure

Every American seven-year-old knows the sting of

Dodge-ball losing; the losership of being picked

Last for any and all activities of competitiveness.

America, the loser, had lost its second war

In two hundred forty-five years of existence, only

The first loss of Saigon was despite our

Actually fighting for it – for democracy in

Vietnam – but Kabul . . . . Kabul we lost

Because Donald J. Trump and his Repub collaborators

Decided to walk away from the Afghan people;

Elected to walk away for racist reasons of

“Brown People Don’t Matter,” and Joseph R. Biden,

Old, and confused, and befuddled by Gop evilness,

Agreed. Afghans lost; Americans lost; the world

Will never be as it was, despite the sky-high

Cost of milk and dino-juice now hobbling middle-

America. So, on that fresh morning only a few

Months ago now, those seven-year-olds looked

At each other knowing the world had changed that day.

It had altered to the detriment of all those

Who would struggle against dictatorship – at

Home and abroad – around the globe. Those kids

In their myriad classrooms didn’t have to struggle

With grand concepts, for they’d been reared

In this country to instantly understand there are

Winners and losers among us, and at all costs –

To hell with ‘fairness’ in these Gop-ruined days –

One must strive mightily to be a winner at

All times. But America had lost its second war,

And the victims of this loss were struggling that

Very morning to survive somehow under conditions

Too brutal to be anything but real in 2021.[vi]

 

 

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