Audre Lorde Knows What I Mean – 2021 in review - 10. Part Ten: Apophis

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Audre Lorde Knows What I Mean –

2021 in review

by AC Benus

 

“The man who is swimming

against the stream knows

the strength of it.”

—Woodrow Wilson, ^[i]

circa 1916

 

 

 

Part Ten:

Finale, Mortar and Pestle

 

LXIII.

 

Der höhere Frieden

von Heinrich von Kleist, 1792

 

Wenn sich auf des Krieges Donnerwagen,

Menschen waffnen, auf der Zwietracht Ruf,

Menschen, die im Busen Herzen tragen,

Herzen, die der Gott der Liebe schuf:

 

Denk ich, können sie doch mir nichts rauben,

Nicht den Frieden, der sich selbst bewährt,

Nicht die Unschuld, nicht an Gott den Glauben,

Der dem Hasse, wie dem Schrecken, wehrt.

 

Nicht des Ahorns dunkelm Schatten wehren,

Daß er mich, im Weizenfeld, erquickt,

Und das Lied der Nachtigall nicht stören,

Die den stillen Busen mir entzückt.

 

 

The Higher Peace

by Heinrich von Kleist, 1792

 

When arms the thunderbolts of war promote,

Men to discord's call have oft obeyed,

Men with hearts they feel rising in their throat,

Hearts that by the God of Love were made:

 

But they can nothing rob from me of note,

Not the peace that proves itself most blessed,

Not innocence, which faith in God can quote

To resist hate and terror with rest.

 

Therefore, fight not the deep shade, though remote,

The maple tree in the wheat field's laid;

Where on the evening bird's song I may dote

As in my silent bosom it's played. [ii]

 

 

LXIV.

 

The wicked Gop’s Tiananmen Square

Did not take place, they swear.

“January 6th?” they’ve come to snit,

“I’ve never heard of it.”

 

With the elephant-brains foisting

the joke that the Capitol Insurrection

– led by them and their Big Lie –

was no big deal, they moved into

aping the Chinese Commie Party’s

insistence the 1989 Revolution

was just some minor disturbance

in a public thoroughfare, somewhere . . . .

 

But now as the final days

of December 2021 come rolling along,

The Party in Hong Kong has

applied its evil power: arresting

truth-telling news agents;

tearing down monuments to

the victims of the tanks and others

forced to die instead of see China

liberated and free. The monuments

come down, the people are jailed,

tortured, perhaps to be executed

like so many were in June of 1989,

their families sent humiliating bills

for the 39-cents’ worth of bullet

shot through their loved-one’s

democracy-loving head.

 

This is a warning for how Gop

One-Party Rule will unfold in

the United States and don’t doubt it.

For as my high school teacher

Mr. Dohle taught us back in the ‘80s,

– before Tiananmen didn’t happen’s Big Lie –

the extremists on the far left and right

like the Nazis and Stalinists

may be politically polar opposites,

but their techniques of oppression

meet up in exactly the same place.

 

So the Gop’s new fiction that

January 6th, 2021, was “no big deal”

is the mirror copy of the Commie’s

“never happened” there, on China’s soil.

But then again, totalitarian parties

will be totalitarian parties,

so one cannot be too surprised

the Repubs have taken their horrible

‘history argumentation’ lessons

from Mao’s lackeys, who still

cower behind the Forbidden City’s

moldering walls in 2022. [iii]

 

 

LXV.

Three hundred twenty-nine days.

Three hundred twenty-nine days

Separate George Floyd’s murder

From twenty-six-year-old

Mario Gonzalez killed by

Alameda cops. Cops on video

Shown kneeling on Mario’s back until

He was dead. Three of them.

Kneeling on one, handcuffed young man’s

Back until dead in the gravel.

 

The powers-that-be are still,

To the day of writing this,

Refusing the release of

His autopsy report;

Two hundred twenty-seven days

His family’s been robbed of the legal grounds

On which his killers could be indicted.

Two hundred twenty-seven

Days justice has been subverted;

Days which just go on piling up. [iv]

 

 

LXVI.

What sadder lilac upon the threshold

Could bloom than to think Mario’s family

Needed the crushing wherewithal to do

What George Floyd’s family did and have their son’s

Sacred, mortal remains autopsied by

A 3rd party coroner to ensure

The truth got out about his brutal killing;

To force the County of Alameda to tell the truth. [v]

 

 

LXVII.

“These victims of hallucinations

Not only revile that of which they

Have no knowledge, but are

Corrupted through the very things

They know by instincts, like brute

Animals, to be wholly untrue. […]

They have abandoned themselves

To Balaam’s error for money,

And like Korah, they perish

For their confrontational trickery. […]

They eat your food without shame

While only looking out for themselves.

 

They are blown about on the winds

As clouds that bring no rain.

They are dead inside and

Should be uprooted like the year-end

Fruit trees that bear no wholesome yield.

They are seasick waves producing

Nothing but the be-fouled sputum

Of foam to sicken others

With their false deeds abroad.

They are the thick fog of darkness

Reserved solely to block out the celestial

Light of shooting stars to enlighten. […]

 

Such men are grumblers and whiners,

Who live for their corporal pleasures

And utter only deceitful bombast. […]

Remember, my belovèd man, these

Imposters living out their unholy groanings

– These groundings devoid of Christian Spirit –

Only revel in causing divisions among us.”

—Epistle of Jude to his

partner, James,

brother of Jesus,

circa 60 A.D. [vi]

 

 

LXVIII.

 

Elegy

 

When lilacs next in the doorway bloom,

My mourning weeds for a once-great society

Will need be donned; my tears, dried.

 

Lilacs bloom perennially, but no more

Shall they be seen upon the threshold

Of our extinguished democracy.

 

Bloom and drooping star in the west

Shall be the only signs left behind

As a thought for a country I loved.

 

 

LXIX.

We’re soon to crest the summit of a hill

From whose vast terrain a darkness must grow –

A world where evil is the status quo

To smother America’s last free will.

For now the Gops won’t be happy until

They’ve made freedom our second Alamo

And set it ablaze as the final blow

On a Nation they’ve worked so long to kill.

 

Yes, over that rise is a setting light,

For their 2022 district-line

Already assures Gop one-party rule.

But, shall our Liberty bear arms and fight

To try and make our setting sun re-shine?—

Or is a second Civil War too cruel.

 

 

LXX.

Funny, but I never saw myself

As a ‘political’ poet.

 

Instead, I assumed I’d always write

Verse of a personal nature.

 

But now, a truer truth is clear to me:

All politics are personal.

 

 

LXXI.

 

“IF—”

for an Immature Age

 

If you can damn a warm January day

As part and parcel of a worldwide curse,

And not let the ignorance in you pipe up and say

“Well, for winter, we could do a lot worse!”;

If instead you long for the renewing snows

Because they’re more needed than weather mild,

Feeling proud how maturity in you grows,

Then you will be an adult, my child!

 

If you can endure springtime showers and grin

With a broadening sense of consciousness,

Ignoring your petty gripes when they begin

And bless Nature’s great advantageousness;

If instead you think of the wheat and flowers

– Of bread for your offspring, with honey piled –

Standing humbled mid the thunderstorms’ powers,

Then you will be an adult, my child.

 

If you can bear the worst August and July

With nary a complaint against the heat,

Knowing the insects need this time ‘fore they die

‘Cause much of the world’s covered in concrete;

If instead you’re prosaic about the sweat

And wipe your brow with a mind reconciled,

Accepting that it’s better to give than get,

Then you will be an adult, my child.

 

If you can watch an autumn sunset go down

And not think what you glimpse is beautiful

Due to tons of sulphur-dioxide brown

Never letting you see the sun in full;

If instead you lament wicked pollution

Covering the Earth as it’s now defiled

And feel renewed to finding a solution,

Then you will be an adult, my child!

 

 

LXXII.

How harshly those in the future

Will look back on us, thinking,

“How easy they had it compared to us.”

But then again, remember, the world

They’re forced to live in

Is wholly our doing.

 

What they will have to do to survive,

We cannot even begin to imagine

Because we think we have it so bad;

Because we let division and strife

Drill in our heads for the oil of ignorance;

Because we won’t man up and love one another.

 

 

LXXIII.

How long ago it feels our Nation had

A leader willing to make the world safe

For democracy where tyrants forbad

Any Liberties that might result in strafe.

And how long ago now it seems we heard

A President list every person’s right

To Freedom from Want, from a Censor’s Word,

From an Oppressor’s Hand, and Fear’s dark Strife.

Replaced are these with one Party’s horsemen;

The Gop’s Conquest, War, Starvation and Death,

Running hot in apostate adrenaline

To pronounce our way of life shibboleth.

Look for no salvation from the Rule of Law,

Whose back they keep riding to overawe. [vii]

 

 

LXXIV.

 

Too Little; Too Late

 

i.

What We Do Today

 

Twenty years ago was the time to save

Our Democracy from foreign,

Yellow newscasting, which made the public

Get lost in an Aussie warren.

Media Reform of FDR’s type

– To restore the Fair and Balanced –

Is what America needed the most . . .

But the Dems acted unconvinced.

 

Thus, in the absence of leadership, see

Mobs of the coerced and kowtowed

Attacking those who would help their children

Think thoughts beyond the merely loud.

Two decades back, something could have been done

To stop Trump’s January goons

Breaking into Congress with rope nooses,

Acting as told by rich tycoons.

 

 

ii.

The Environmental Economy

 

Twenty years ago, our “leaders” – who were

All cash-and-carry property

Of lobbyists – killed California law

For Detroit’s Irrelevant Three.

Emission-neutral transport set in stone,

And signed by a Gop governor,

Forced companies to hybrid engines

And sell them, causing quite a stir.

 

Toyota brought the Prius to market

Because the public wanted it;

GM built the electric EV1

To rule over the new-car gambit.

But instead of selling us GM cars,

They paid to hurt the citizens,

Denying the world the clean vehicle

GM could have sold in the billions.

 

iii.

Myth-Making Politics

 

So, here we are, their lies so outrageous,

Shed upon a people so dumb,

Gop one-party tyranny is at hand:

A gun-mad society come

Where the angst is NRA-approved for

Mass murder; where this gun cancer

Militarized all community-based

Policing like it was an answer.

 

Now when the allegèd ‘good guys’ cry out

“Let’s roll!”, they do it from the top

Of Army Humvees with machine gun locked,

Manned by some antsy traffic cop:

Two decades of this unlicensed slaughter,

By shit-pancing a dim public

Has othered those of America’s own

And brought to heel this Republic.

 

iv

“Forgive me” –

Social Justice

 

2021, a Detroit car firm

Announced they’d go all electric . . .

Starting at some vague date in the future . . .

But it’s just another gimmick.

Everything now is 20 years too late –

Too late to save us from a fall,

And our selfish age must come to an end,

For too little’s too late overall.

 

Yet humans, we like our Ray of Hope talk,

Spreading it on thick as manure,

But telling shit from shinola’s a prob

With optimism’s base allure.

Hope-talk – thinking “they’ll fix it down the line” –

Got us into this quagmire.

No one’s coming to pull us from the muck,

And my tepid words won’t inspire. [viii]

 

 

 

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