Wow your eyes were wide
The first time we said hi
In that plastic box
You were more bulletproof than Kennedy
And the swaddling cloths
Didn’t occupy your time
Like the tangles
Babes before you
Squirmed in their struggles
Life’s first lesson;
And your giggles made me believe in mary
All was magic and new
And candy bars and snow mean something too
All the good the generation TRIED
Ended up enough
The cottage, yes the nest,
More gainly than the billy club
That represents the brutal past;
Thousands of years
Of murder and theft
SO WE BUMPED OUR HEADS WHEN WE WERE Young;
Just never wanted to count myself a bum
Never mind the crowd
That circle that gets you
In the embrace that you learn
Is all you take out the door
And the unbroken band
Is worth all you lavish
Spend the days staring
Blank at the hundred year old tree
Without thought til years after-when it seems all ago;
And man!
was it a drag the night John Lennon got shot
Cosell announcing football & murder-Monday Night dipsomania
In old armchairs at Butch’s
Who burned himself up with a pile of the Detroit News, April of ‘85
Leaving us all bewildered
His Ma, niece Terry and me,
Among the Firemen, Football Big
In the toxic patch of front yard
with cindered hair and brows from rushing in
To retrieve a friend;
Not a wall of fire nor a lake
A Small
pond or big
Puddle
A
Man sized hell
the cottage-a stoked furnace
was burning from all, paint, synthetic fiber, 360 degrees.
And when the dirt covered him over,
was that it?
Was that all there was as
The suited and gowned walked away?
Like December 8 1980, during halftime of Jets Miami.
The snow was deeper that year, 1980
We took a picture
8 foot piles along West Parkway
Work was still labor
But we had our hearts
And a neighbor,
So unlucky hears laughing chasing;
No one was hungry at bedtime.
And didn’t Edison cash in on Christmas
Better than 4th of July booming in a single night
Human love and fealty requires
We present the small
With shiny enthrall
And smiles
It’s how we keep them
And they stay in our hearts.
And the approving cheer on the smallest face in the the house
Is worth another GD year of putting up with the crooks-
Our masters.
Who rely that
What’s in your wallet?
Is the same reindeer game
Of winners and losers
Kings used to play
and
The natural arrival of cruelty
Like water reaching its level
the Imperial treachery
is reliable
to keep one upon the throne?
The hounding
Of a civilization that won’t-can’t share what it has no matter what-
It didn’t make me hate all blacks when one hit me in the head with a brick
When my back was turned
In summer 1987
For smiling politely at “his woman”
Unconcious all night on Cass Ave. til the sun stirred my head
As light might pierce a cave;
I did wonder, “What the fuck?”
I went home and soaped up and went to work;
I made Coleman Young a Corned Beef Sandwich
At Trappers Alley before we gave way to the Mob;
And the fairytale jingle of coins, and lottery
Sitting a wake at the funeral of our work;
Buying shoes, hammers, TV’s, American flags
All made in China
All Hail WalMart and the Supreme Court!!!
I can see how
The gun’s a magnet
Without all that Oakland County School;
football and baseball mitts, and trips to Dairy Queen.
White faces peer through polished glass;
Car-bound making passage
The green zone from Farmington to the Fisher freeway
Sleep in the eye too
satin border of the blanket at home
Still moist with snore drool
;
Asking
“How did they allow these fine homes to fall down?”
Whose timbers the banks owned then-and still do
When Detroit was mostly white people
The mirror said they thrived,
Treading mortgage
The pre-suburban way;
I’ve been alive awhile and I’ve seen a lot-
Mostly on TV.
Thank God.
When I say
When I say
The usa
Is the greatest country in the world
Please remember
I have only been to Canada
(Windsor & Toronto)
Where the cigarettes all tasted stale.
When you hear it said
The usa
Is the greatest country in the world
Remember the parrot!
The places
Where everywhere else lives
Is a theory-words
Arabs
Terrorists
Oil kings
Religious NUTS
Sunnis and the Shia’
Gooks!?
Oh well like I say
Love the Buddah
Jesus would
The memory of Woodward Ave.
After dark when Hudsons was still open
7th floor for mink coats
down in the basement for $5 pants.
When they laid cobblestone
Envisionoing a Mall on the street.
The banks refused to build
What the genius, Coleman A. Young wanted
(nervous across 8 Mile Rd.)
A prosperous black city
Black folk in Detroit
Must go to the suburbs to shop
Usurping the tax base of a city they will reconquer.
The white flyers.
It’s all unplanned and impossible to prove.
USA!!!!!!USA!!!!!!!!
WE’RE FREE TO DO WHAT THEY TELL US TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Joseph Hughes Coleman
9:36 pm
Nov. 21, 2007-Thanksgiving Eve
Lawrenceburg TN USA
i RARELY CALL MYSELF "AN ARTIST", BUT THERE WAS A TIME WHEN i COULD LIE IN BED AND READ WITHOUT DOZING OFF, AND READ THOUSANDS OF PAGES OF THIS MAN'S HANDICRAFT, AND WAS ASTONISHED-AT THE TRUTH OF OBSERVATION, AT THE TRUTH OF THE FRAILTY OF THE OBSERVER-IF ANYONE WANTS TO UNDERSTAND AMERICAN POLITICS-READ MAILER'S COVERAGEOF THE 1960, 64, 68, AND 72 RED AND BLUE CONVENTIONS; WHEN THOSE AFFAIRS WERE FAMILY FIGHTS AND THE LEAST BRUISED BECAME A CANDIDATE.
I WILL MISS NORMAN MAILER THE REST OF MY LIFE.
