Saturday, January 30, 2010

Boom! A Troubled Potato Of Justice - Contemporary America Seen From An Immigrant Poet's Eyes, Confessions Of A Spoiled American


[Young immigrant from Central American highlands prior to his arrival to the U.S.A.]

[Please note that this piece does not reflect the opinions and beliefs of my Learning For Life Group colleagues.]

I begin with late American poet Howard Nemerov's prophetic, sarcastic and humorous poem, Boom!, one of the still most appropriate critiques of current American culture, its attendant duplicitous, complicit mainstream religions/fundamentalisms including it's recent Epimethean offsprings, those latter-day "spiritualities", the New Age, and the continually mutating "positive thinking cults" spawned of late 1800's American pragmatist philosophy with subsequent developments of willful anti-intellectual and non-critical thinking, gullible dominant populace in perpetual collective denial of earlier near obliteration of, and latter-day present adulteration, of North, Central and South American indigenous and other indigenous world cultures, their religious beliefs and practices reshaped for mostly upper and middle class consumeristic, materialistic, egoic personal and tribal gains, these profound traditions reduced to elaborate spiritual entertainments/entrancements filling sacro-secular coffers of self-appointed gurus, ministers, mystery school priestesses with their mewling, submissive acolytes, and others "spiritually-in-the-know" including major network and cable channel network talk show hosts many boasting of top ratings and mega-billions of dollars and power. "Final Truth Messages" (of which there are apparently many variations) are propounded for a high fee by facelifted, body sculpted yoginis-with-organic-bellinis, angelic anorexics without shadow and therefore their followers are obligated to carry it, Hollywood quantum Bleepers and so-called "ancient" Secrets Keepers-Turned-Blabberers cum local and national mystic bliss ninny-channelers-purveyors of now spiritual/self-help DVD's, CD's, best selling authors and publishers whose gelt and gain is always "theologically justified", well enlightened, well fed, fat and pathologically happy with millions of dollars from often of sincere and suffering followers.

Encyclopedia Mythica informs us that "Epimetheus ("afterthought") is the son of Iapetus and Clymene. He foolishly ignored his brother Prometheus'[whose name means "forethought"] warnings to beware of any gifts from Zeus. He accepted Pandora as his wife, thereby bringing ills and sorrows to the world." Nemerov's poem, certainly present and foreseeing, speaks for itself, written in the 1950's, now certainly even more exact in description of Epimethean American culture and values in the 2000's and to come. It seems that only catastrophic events shocks Epimetheas into reality out of fantasy, entertainment and personal gain-ment into using technology for other than personal good/tribal good, tsunamis, hurricanes, influenza plagues and earthquakes the massive KATZ's needed to temporarily waken entire collectives from narcissistic narcotic egoic spiritually tittilating entertaining trances. Collective attention deficit disorder will prevail quickly and soon to be collectively narcolepsia returns, self strokers seeking more entertainments. spiritual pornography being the latest form of materialism and addiction/distration. The great realist haiku poet, Kobayashi Issa, from Japan of the eighteenth century writes:

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.

In a blatantly Boom! culture Let us choose to be aware of both hell and flowers, personally holding those opposites, or trying to, so that we may be awake with helpful insights and warning observations such as this one by Issa:

Don't know about the people,
but all the scarecrows
are crooked.

What do crooked scarecrows reveal of the people who make them? Psychology, old and new, would lead us to consider the image as reflective of those who make it. Hell and flowers, crooked people and crooked scaring powers, these opposites within us work and play with as well as within our techne. When we and our machines fail self and collective, the planet entire, may we own it, correct it as best we can so that we may also say with Issa:

In these latter-day,
Degenerate times,
Cherry-blossoms everywhere!

*************************************************


[A poster in Mexico 2003 protesting the U.S.A Bush administration's preemptive war for oil. The sign says,

IMPERIALIST TROOPS OUT
OF IRAQ NOW!
NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL!
DOWN WITH BUSH AND HUSSEIN!
]



Boom!
by Howard Nemerov, from New and Selected Poems

“Boom,” a riff on bourgeois religion (written well before white Americans dumped “religion” for that more upscale commodity, “spirituality". --Brian Volck from http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/remembering-howard-nemerov-in-national-poetry-month


Boom! -- by Howard Nemerov, from New And Selected Poems

SEES BOOM IN RELIGION, TOO

Atlantic City, June 23, 1957 (AP).--President Eisenhower's pastor said tonight that Americans are living in a period of "unprecedented religious activity" caused by paid vacations, the eight-hour day and modern conveniences.

"The fruits of material progress," said the Rev. Edward L. R. Elson of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, "have provided the leisure, the energy, and the means for a level of human and spiritual values never before reached."


Here at the Vespasian-Carlton, it's just one
religious activity after another; the sky
is constantly being crossed by cruciform
airplanes, in which nobody disbelieves
for a second, and the tide, the tide
of spiritual progress and prosperity
miraculously keeps rising, to a level
never before attained. The churches are full,
the beaches are full, and the filling-stations
are full, God's great ocean is full
of paid vacationers praying an eight-hour day
to the human and spiritual values, the fruits,
the leisure, the energy, and the means, Lord,
the means for the level, the unprecedented level,
and the modern conveniences, which are also full.
Never before, O Lord, have the prayers and praises
from belfry and phonebooth, from ballpark and barbecue
the sacrifices, so endlessly ascended.

It was not thus when Job in Palestine
sat in dust and cried, cried bitterly;
when Damien kissed the lepers on their wounds
it was not thus; it was not thus
when Francis worked a fourteen hour day
strictly for the birds', when Dante took
a week's vacation without pay and it rained
part of the time, O Lord, it was not thus.

But now when gears mesh and tires burn
and the ice chatters in the shakers and the priest
in the pulpit, and Thy Name, O Lord,
is kept before the public, while the fruits
ripen and religion booms and the level rises
and every modern convenience runneth over,
that it may never be with us as it hath been
with Athens and Karnak and Nagasaki,
nor Thy sun for one instant refrain from shining
on the rainbow Buick by the breezeway
or the Chris Craft with the uplift raft;
that we may continue to be the just folks we are,
plain people with ordinary superliners and
disposable diaperliners, people of the stop'n'shop
'n'pray as you go, of hotel, motel, boatel,
the humble pilgrims of no deposit no return
and please adjust thy clothing, who will give to Thee,
if Thee will keep us going, our annual
Miss Universe, for Thy Name's Sake, Amen.


*************************************************


I have of late been in correspondence with several "arrivals" to North America, immigrant poets, one now a U.S. citizen, one with a green card and another, well, living and writing in the margins between bureaucratic red tape and dirty work boots nearby with a grab-bag packed ready to be sent back to his country of ethnic cleansing in a moment's notice. Each is or was an accomplished poet in his own country, published, respected, and sorely missed by family and friends though their respective governments would arrest, imprison and/or execute them if they ever return. Conditions in each country were and are such that unimaginably heart-wrenching, difficult decisions were made to leave their beloved homelands and seek asylum in the United States. They arrived here with no fanfare but with much ongoing suspicion as "potential terrorists" from many "good" Americans mindlessly ensconced in their ethnically sanitized suburbs and homesteads, the outer/other-than-U.S.A. world fed to them via increasingly non-objective media images carefully calculated to generate and manipulate basic human emotions of fear, paranoia, competition, and security in hopes to control the masses by creating "mass mind" ready to be commanded by increasingly corporation appointed powers who control the content, shape and thrust of so-called "information".

Unbeknown to most North Americans immigrant arrivals here in the U.S. herald unexpected opportunities for U.S. citizens to learn first person accounts of oral history about the world at large, of world and cultural history and of unique and varied beliefs and customs of the human family. With such new neighbors and possible citizens unexpected insights and appreciations, greater meaning and perspectives can be gained regarding what advantages are had by being a U.S. citizen. I, like many fellow citizens, for one have taken too much for granted for too long.

A spoiled American, I easily and readily complain if there is little heat or hot water in my too expensive apartment or if the delivery person is late with my meal ordered conveniently from one of several of my communication devices at 2 a.m. in the morning. With rare exception I've yet to see an American face, no matter the racial or ethnic roots, at my door. An immigrant face usually greets me with my hot food, pleasant enough, with enough English to transact costs and change, and with rare exception sincere gratitude expressed for the tips I generously give. I could enumerate the many, many assumed and taken for granted benefits of North American life brought to mind often enough when an immigrant friend sings their praises and I am once again reminded of lazy, spoiled mind assuming these things as my right and how dare the inconvenience of a boiler broken down in the basement, of a subway or bus being late, of not finding the jar of green pepper corns in brine on my local grocery shelf. The fire department shows up in minutes when called to quell a fire or check a gas leak. And on and on.

One of my new friends I'll call Kismet, a published poet and professor of philosophy and sociology in his homeland, upon arrival to the U.S. worked hard delivering groceries in Chicago for 3 years apparently without vocal complaint, grateful to be alive as his life was threatened back home, his two sons are, he hopes, at least alive in prison and not executed as many of his family, neighbors and colleagues were. His wife was killed in a public market only six months before he crept across many borders to seek political asylum in the U.S. until he might one day return to his country to seek justice for her death and others, for those many injustices inflicted upon his family and people forced to leave everything behind and wander at the mercy of state, of groups, and an apparently indifferent international community.

In our initial correspondence Kismet and I spoke mostly of poetry, of its craft, of the hard work on a poem born of love of the form and what it can express when well done. I noted to Kismet, quoting late American poet, Richard Hugo, that "I never worked hard in my life except on a poem", somewhat hyperbolic but in essence true.


As soon as I sent my email message I realized what a luxury it was for me to be able to do this "hardest work of my life", to work on a poem or other form of writing for hours, for days and weeks, even months and years. And I realized too late that I had said this to a man still struggling to make a living now in a pawn shop in an indifferent, large western American city. His poems are now written on the back of paper receipts or brown paper bags in the pawn shop, or late nights over an opened can of tuna, an onion slice, a piece of bread, in a small room in a back alley in a neighborhood of poor Americans and other immigrants who turn their frustrations upon each other rather than the social institutions and conditions which prevent personal and collective advancement in this "Great American life".

He offered to pay a fellow worker in the pawn shop, a young immigrant man who respectfully refused payment, to type his poems on a computer poetry site available to one and all around the world. This is how I found Kismet amongst thousands of aspiring poets. His poems among countless terribly written, rote, emotive online offerings of mostly adolescent love lorn or lost stood powerfully above the trite mediocrity filled with hard work, intensity, tenderness, sensitivity to craft and tone, profound grace and humility in the midst of suffering, with just anger, a poet of obvious gift passionately filled with love for life. I sent him a note of sincere appreciation and thus our friendship began. In getting to know Kismet and some other immigrant poets I have discovered that the unexpected journey of many a poem is fraught with literal life and death, homelessness and sleepless fearful, lonely nights for thousands of miles of much grief and determined hope with an enduring tried and tested faith and will that life will right itself, some basic human goodness and kind regard shall return and be expressed all the stronger and more valued for the journey.

My poet friend does not complain about his host country, the U.S. He is most grateful for some peace of mind and relative security in spite of neighborhood gangs, slumlords (corrupt, uncaring landlords) and other attendant urban takers, having more money now than he's ever made from hard work back home, never from a poem or book of poems which apparently were and are burned by the ruling junta when found. He is not here for the money, he says, though he values it. He is gathering himself, regathering himself, for present and future battles in his homeland even from where he currently lives. He cannot rest at ease pleased for himself, "I live for others, Mr. Warren," he says, "My life is not mine. I must speak out, find a way back to my home. Now I am roaming feet but my heart is staying always at my home...my words, my work now cry what breaks my heart open to life, the possibilities for more good simple days and nights. To hold up my old head and smile to "filled up and emptied" is good."

Kismet shares with me a deep love of Russian poets of the early and mid-20th century, many of whom were persecuted by the Soviet government. We both greatly lov the novel, Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, his Dr. Yuri Zhivago, son of privilege is thrust into a fateful personal and collective tumult. A healer of body illness, with his poetry he heals not only Russian but all senstive human souls reminding all of Love's endurance, of Justice, of Beauty, of ideals kinship and kindness for one and all. And of not shirking battles Fate thrusts upon one, not a victim but a witness and a fire.

Recalling the mental and physical hellish existence of the masses during and after the Bolshevik Revolution depicted graphically in the novel, Kismet experientially understands the scope of human suffering then and now in many parts of the world, even here in the U.S.. Kismet finds it both a marvel and an absurd comedy that the current political debate over health reform bills and arguments about how much the government should be involved in people's lives, especially when suntanned senators, obese potentates in striped suits, self-righteously point sausage fingers across aisles at other well-fed privileged rivals for political gains and power. "I recognize these men from my own country. Only the costumes have changed." The fact that this tantrum called political "debate" takes place publicly is miraculous to Kismet, a great tragicomedy of errors and a victory, too, revealing styles of human cleverness crafted well enough, calculatingly enough, to accommodate imperfectly human imperfection beset by powerful animal drives for survival and thriv-al over rivals while tolerating those very rivals without literal bloodshed though he observes with sadness how rivals and scapegoats are ghetto-ized, marginalized in inhuman conditions in parts of towns and cities where harried, stressed occupants afflict themselves and others with violence and hatred. He does not miss the irony that most of the faces of power are still white and male but he sees now an African American president trying to govern this unruly mass of tribes all proclaiming to speak for the better good of, for and by the people, especially their own people, as a most welcome, necessary and miraculous arrival at this time in human history for all of the world. A tall order for one person. We mistake the symbol for the sign and expect Obama and similar to BE the symbol. When the human proves to be imperfect projections of symbols are removed. Projectors, grow angry, disappointed, feel deceived and failed not understanding a basic law of the psyche is that no man or woman can truly BE a symbol which a living archetypal reality from the depth dimensions of the psyche. The symbolic reality is really real. A person can be a finger pointing to that symbol but lest he/she become inflated and identified with the symbol (the we have a Hitler, a Ben Laden, a Stalin, a Hussein, a Cheney, etc.) they must consciously carry the mass projections and reflect them back to those projectors calling them to find that living symbolic reality within themselves and doing the work.

I have often felt and do often enough feel ashamed when with my immigrant friends and their earnest appreciation of what I have so assumed and taken for granted of my citizenship. My tendency is to merely complain and angrily proclaim a desire to get out of this "spoiled increasingly Dis-Union of Dunces" and get to a developing nation where the values are or might be influenced and oriented toward the basics of human survival, the valuing of bread and the honest work to make it, to value the power of words and ideas of all kinds, of free minds and exchange and debate of those ideas knowing that education as empowerment which is truly a human right of all women, children, gays, bisexual and trans-gender, ethnic, ancient and modern tribal groups of all kinds, anyone and everyone considered "other". I rant on about the accumulation of cyber and other convenient entertainments and toys which infantilize, soften bodies and minds regressing them to two year old mentalities of "mine", "MY way!" and "NO!" with addictive synapse-entraining instant gratification from keyboard buttons pushed depending on internet speed, Fresh Direct, Amazon, soft and hard porn, and more.

What do we reap for all this convenience but more time. But more time to do what? To be entertained, fatten ourselves to distraction, impacted souls and bodies growing impatient like two year olds who cannot get it fast enough, just more more more-as-enough. Two year old mind splits all of reality into "all good" and "all bad" categories. It does not take much to see that the American national mind has regressed to this two year old splitting mind. True bi-partisanship and a dynamic democracy can never occur in a nation two year old minds. Unfortunately, this child mind is found not only in the U.S. but in many parts of first, second and third world countries. Fundamentalism's (including politcal parties and philosophies, regional identities, etc.) of any kind cannot survive without the splitting two year old mind, all good/all bad, yes/NO!, their deities most often frighteningly possessed of two year old mind, as well, seeking their gratification by any means necessary, all too ready to punish and mind-fuck with confusing graces which are temporary and undermining thus hard congealing kinship clans and groups, denominations and cabals of the Elect possessed of the one and only "True Truth" ruling more by fear and feeding upon human insecurities in an overwhelming expanding universe reflected locally with a growing non-white immigrant ethnic citizenry and population.

Kismet assumes the goodness of hard work, its nobility, no matter the work. He understands that he and many thousands of immigrants benefit from many Americans refusal of hard physical labor. Another immigrant friend, Anselmo, fleeing civil war in his homeland, a bounty on his head for decrying the regional corrupt authorities, here in the U.S. migrantly picks cucumbers and potatoes for long hours for what Americans consider pittance pay. And though many Americans reserve the right to protest the presence of illegal immigrants such as my friend, Anselmo, most would haughtily refuse to do the work he readily does, seeing it beneath their dignity and view of themselves and self worth to literally stoop to such labor. Anselmo is grateful for the hard work, cucumber by cucumber, potato by potato, blueberry by blueberry, field by field, state by state, sending money home to his large extended family in a small impoverished pueblo in high, dry, increasingly more barren desert mountains.

Hourly/daily Kismets and Anselmos arrive in the U.S. most seeking an honest day's work and wage in safety and dignity which shall hopefully extend into weeks, months, and as many years it takes to get a head start much less ahead in their lives here and in their own countries. Some stay here. Many actually do happily return home grateful to the U.S., their having possessed more of the authentic American dream than millions of U.S. citizens taking for granted a right to vote, full grocery shelves, 24 hour electricity and water, and countless others amenities which are just assumed will always be available as plenteous as air to breathe and gravity to hold us all to ground.

After sending Kismet my message about "I never worked hard in my life except on a poem", next morning, computer rebooted, espresso in hand, in my "Inbox" was his message in response to mine:


Dearest friend,

Many thoughts but too many boxes to unpack and many strange things to shelf. I am glad you understand my way of poems. My way of poems is a voice for others. Yes, I say my voice too but saying for others at same time, I hope.

Always return to simple - let the poem work, not the poet or reader for is not the life hard enough? You say like R. Hugo, "I never worked hard in my life except on a poem." Perhaps this is privileged American idea, I am not sure but because here one or some can afford the luxury of hard work on poems and not have to hard scramble for bread, for a troubled potato of justice. In many other other places frozen cabbage fields of gentleness are stolen by the State, or occupying tribe. Each demand and have their scribes, too. So because now wars for cabbages, potatoes, bread keep going. So I write this tonight.

Tomorrow I maybe erase all these thoughts, try again, rethink many hard things. Important to feel every thing...onion skins do not make an onion. Too many skins. Not enough onions. Anyway, too, I think only a prayer does not make a better person or better world.

What do we make of all this living? We make friends. My prayer is friends and this makes better person and better world, yes?

You are here with me, and somewhere my poor sons, my dearest wife with my heart, and my home, always.

Dearest friend,


Kismet



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


This is the published, more edited form of the article above. This is published in the February 2010 Learning For Life Group Newsletter.



[A poster on a wall in Mexico 2003 protesting the U.S. Bush administration's preemptive war in Irag. The poster reads: IMPERIALISTIC TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ NOW! NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL! DOWN WITH BUSH AND HUSSEIN!]

Boom! -- by Howard Nemerov, from New And Selected Poems

SEES BOOM IN RELIGION, TOO

Atlantic City, June 23, 1957 (AP).--President Eisenhower's pastor said tonight that Americans are living in a period of "unprecedented religious activity" caused by paid vacations, the eight-hour day and modern conveniences.

"The fruits of material progress," said the Rev. Edward L. R. Elson of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, "have provided the leisure, the energy, and the means for a level of human and spiritual values never before reached."


Here at
the Vespasian-Carlton, it's just one
religious activity after another; the sky
is constantly being crossed by cruciform
airplanes, in which nobody disbelieves
for a second, and the tide, the tide
of spiritual progress and prosperity
miraculously keeps rising, to a level
never before attained. The churches are full,
the beaches are full, and the filling-stations
are full, God's great ocean is full
of paid vacationers praying an eight-hour day
to the human and spiritual values, the fruits,
the leisure, the energy, and the means, Lord,
the means for the level, the unprecedented level,
and the modern conveniences, which are also full.
Never before, O Lord, have the prayers and praises
from belfry and phonebooth, from ballpark and barbecue
the sacrifices, so endlessly ascended.

It was not thus when Job in Palestine
sat in dust and cried, cried bitterly;
when Damien kissed the lepers on their wounds
it was not thus; it was not thus
when Francis worked a fourteen hour day
strictly for the birds', when Dante took
a week's vacation without pay and it rained
part of the time, O Lord, it was not thus.

But now when gears mesh and tires burn
and the ice chatters in the shakers and the priest
in the pulpit, and Thy Name, O Lord,
is kept before the public, while the fruits
ripen and religion booms and the level rises
and every modern convenience runneth over,
that it may never be with us as it hath been
with Athens and Karnak and Nagasaki,
nor Thy sun for one instant refrain from shining
on the rainbow Buick by the breezeway
or the Chris Craft with the uplift raft;
that we may continue to be the just folks we are,
plain people with ordinary superliners and
disposable diaperliners, people of the stop'n'shop
'n'pray as you go, of hotel, motel, boatel,
the humble pilgrims of no deposit no return
and please adjust thy clothing, who will give to Thee,
if Thee will keep us going, our annual
Miss Universe, for Thy Name's Sake, Amen.


*************************************************



[Onesimo with his calf in his homeland just before escaping from political violence to the United States in 1968]


I have of late been in correspondence with several "arrivals" to North America, immigrant poets, one now a U.S. citizen, one with a green card and another, well, living and writing in the margins between bureaucratic red tape and dirty work boots nearby with a grab-bag packed ready to be sent back to his country of ethnic cleansing in a moment's notice. Each is or was an accomplished poet in his own country, published, respected, and sorely missed by family and friends though their respective governments would arrest, imprison and/or execute them if they ever return. Conditions in each country were and are such that unimaginably heart-wrenching, difficult decisions were made to leave their beloved homelands and seek asylum in the United States. They arrived here with no fanfare but with much ongoing suspicion as "potential terrorists" from many "good" Americans mindlessly ensconced in their ethnically "sanitized" suburbs and homesteads, the outer/other-than-U.S.A. world fed to them via increasingly non-objective media images and misinformation carefully calculated to generate and manipulate basic human emotions of fear, paranoia, competition, security and consumerism.

Unbeknown to most North Americans immigrant arrivals here in the U.S. herald unexpected opportunities for U.S. citizens to learn first hand accounts of oral history about the world at large, of world and cultural history and of unique and varied beliefs and customs of the human family. With such new neighbors and possible citizens unexpected insights and appreciations, greater meaning and perspectives can be gained regarding what advantages are had by being a U.S. citizen. I, like many fellow citizens, for one have taken these advantages too much for granted for too long.

One of my new friends I'll call Kismet, a published poet and professor of philosophy and sociology in his homeland, upon arrival to the U.S. delivered groceries in Chicago for 3 years apparently without vocal complaint, grateful to be alive since his life was threatened back home, his two sons are, he hopes, at least alive in prison, not executed as many of his family, neighbors and colleagues were. His wife was killed in a public market only six months before he crept across many borders to seek political asylum in the U.S. until he might one day return to his country to seek legal justice for her death and others, for those many injustices inflicted upon his family and people forced to leave everything behind and wander at the mercy of state, of tribal groups, and an apparently indifferent international community.

In our initial correspondence Kismet and I spoke mostly of poetry, of its craft, of the hard work on a poem born, of love of the form and what it can express when well done. I noted to Kismet, quoting late American poet, Richard Hugo, that "I never worked hard in my life except on a poem", somewhat hyperbolic but in essence true.

As soon as I sent my email message I realized what a luxury it was for me to be able to do this "hardest work of my life", to work on a poem or other form of writing for hours, for days and weeks, even months and years. And I realized too late that I had said this to a man still struggling to make a living now in a pawn shop in an indifferent, large city in the American West. His poems are now written on the back of paper receipts or brown paper bags in the pawn shop, or late nights over an opened can of tuna, an onion slice, a piece of bread, in a small room in a back alley in a neighborhood of poor Americans and other immigrants who turn their frustrations upon each other rather than the social institutions and conditions which prevent personal and collective advancement in this "Great American life".

He offered to pay a fellow worker, a young immigrant man who respectfully refused payment, to type his poems on a computer poetry site available to one and all around the world. This is how I found Kismet amongst thousands of aspiring poets. His poems, among countless terribly written, rote, emotive online offerings of mostly adolescent love lorn or lost, stood powerfully above the trite, troubled mediocrity filled with hard work, intensity, tenderness, sensitivity to craft and tone, profound grace and humility in the midst of suffering, with just anger, a poet of obvious gift passionately filled with love for life. I sent him a note of sincere appreciation and thus our friendship began. In getting to know Kismet and some other immigrant poets I have discovered that the unexpected journey of many a poem is fraught with literal life and death, homelessness and sleepless, fearful, lonely nights for thousands of miles of grief and determined hope, an enduring tried and tested faith, and will that life will right itself, some basic human goodness and kind regard shall return and be lent to other pilgrims all the stronger and more valued for the journey.

My poet friend does not complain about his host country, the U.S. He is most grateful for some peace of mind and relative security in spite of neighborhood gangs, slumlords (corrupt, uncaring landlords) and other attendant urban takers, having more money now than he's ever made from hard work back home, never from a poem or book of poems which apparently were and are burned by the ruling junta when found. He is not here for the money, he says, though he values it. He is gathering himself, regathering himself, for present and future battles in his homeland even from where he currently lives. He cannot rest at ease pleased for himself, "I live for others, Mr. Warren," he says, "My life is not mine. I must speak out, find a way back to my home. Now I am roaming feet but my heart is staying always at my home...my words, my work now cry what breaks my heart open to life, the possibilities for more good simple days and nights. To hold up my old head at the end and smile to "filled up and emptied" is good."

Kismet assumes the goodness of hard work, its nobility, no matter the work. He understands that he and many thousands of immigrants benefit from many Americans refusal of hard physical labor. Another immigrant friend, Anselmo, fleeing civil war in his homeland, a bounty on his head for decrying the corrupt regional authorities, is here in the U.S. migrantly planting and harvesting cucumbers and potatoes for for what Americans consider pittance pay. And though many Americans reserve the right to protest the presence of illegal immigrants such as my friend, Anselmo, most would haughtily refuse to do the work he readily does, seeing it beneath their dignity and self worth to literally stoop to such labor. Anselmo is grateful for the hard work, cucumber by cucumber, potato by potato, field by field, state by state, sending money home to his large extended family in a small impoverished pueblo in high, dry, increasingly more barren desert mountains.

Hourly/daily Kismets and Anselmos arrive in the U.S. most seeking an honest day's work and wage in safety and dignity which shall hopefully extend into weeks, months, and as many years it takes to get a head start much less ahead in their lives here and in their own countries. Some stay here. Many actually do happily return home grateful to the U.S., their having possessed more of the authentic American dream than millions of U.S. citizens taking for granted a right to vote, full grocery shelves, 24 hour electricity and water, and countless others amenities which are just assumed will always be available as plenteous as air to breathe and gravity to hold us all to ground.

After sending Kismet my message about "I never worked hard in my life except on a poem", next morning, computer rebooted, espresso near at hand, I saw his response in my inbox:


Dearest friend,

Many thoughts but too many boxes to unpack and many strange things to tag and shelf. I am glad you understand my way of poems.

My way of poems is a voice for others. Yes, I say my voice too but saying for others at same time, I hope.

Always return to simple - let the poem work, not the poet or reader for is not the life hard enough? You say like R. Hugo, "I never worked hard in my life except on a poem." Perhaps this is privileged American idea, I am not sure but because here one or some can afford the luxury of hard work on poems and not have to hard scramble for bread, for a troubled potato of justice. In many other other places frozen cabbage fields of gentleness are stolen by the State, or occupying tribe. Each demand and have their poets, too. So because now wars for cabbages, potatoes, bread keep going. So I write this tonight.

Tomorrow I maybe erase all these thoughts, try again, rethink many hard things. Important to feel every thing...onion skins do not make an onion. Too many skins. Not enough onions. Anyway, too, I think only a prayer does not make a better person or better world.

What do we make of all this living? We make friends. My prayer is friends and this makes better person and better world, yes?

You are here with me, and somewhere my poor sons, my dearest wife with my heart, and my home.

Dearest friend,


Kismet

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