Poem For El Salvador
(Sung) I want all the children to have enough to eat I want to believe in a world without end I want everybody to be safe and happy I want everyone to be loved (Spoken) Poem for El Salvador Poem for Lebanon Poem for Cambodia and Chile and Northern Ireland and Grenada Poem for South Africa and Namibia and Angola and Poland and Afghanistan and all of Southeast Asia Poem for the millions and millions of words written for the millions and millions of strong angry fighting men Poem for the bleeding gums of 50,000 women refugees in Somalia and for the broken ribs of Cambodian nurses raped by Vietnamese soldiers Poem for the breasts of Argentinians hooked to electric shock torture machines and for the ashes of Palestinian mothers exterminated by Israeli bombs Poem for the hands and knees of the maids who scrub the floors of the Salvadorian ruling class palaces and for the hair of Spanish midwives hacked off by the medical police Poem for the cracked skulls of the battered wives of San Francisco and Dallas and Philadelphia and Chicago Poem for the wombs of all mothers birthing more and more men who invent new diseases and cut off the heads of children with bayonets and worship and torture for the greater glory of the Cult of Personality Poem for cancer in the hearts of all strong angry men who hate life Strong angry men keep coming up to me and saying “Why don’t you write more poems about the armed struggle for liberation in El Salvador and the Philippines and Namibia and Angola” So I wrote a poem about the son of a Russian Communist Party official who begged me to smuggle him in some “good American pornography” and the wild stag parties of the Red Brigade on the night before they go out and shoot off the kneecaps of another Italian judge and sitting with macho Marxists at a disco in downtown San Salvador looking all the pretty ladies up and down and making love with the daughter of a white collar criminal from Exxon while she was on an Irish vacation and I was living with real wife-beating soldiers of the Irish Republican Army and hearing the same dumb joke about the slut who couldn’t get enough as told by Yassir Arafat and Henry Kissinger and Colonel Khadafy and the Dallas Cowboy football team Poem for the starving women artists in Somalia and the bleeding women geniuses in El Salvador Poem to burn all criminally innocent entertainment and the bad fatherly poetry of Mao Tse-Tung and the naked pictures that remind us who we’re here to serve and the pamphlets of right-wing assassins plagiarizing the slogans of left-wing assassins and the literature of all strong angry men who hate life The problem isn’t overpopulation It’s overpopulation by the wrong people The problem isn’t overpopulation It’s overpopulation by the wrong people Poem for the wrong people Poem for the strong and angry capitalist, marxist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, caucasian, black, arab, and asian woman-haters (Chanted) 2-4-6-8 Organize and smash the state 2-4-6-8 Organize and smash the state Kick the ass of the ruling class Kick the ass of the ruling class Push ’em back Push ’em back Way back Push ’em back Push ’em back Way back Push ’em back Push ’em back Way back (Shouted) Use the food as a weapon Use the medicine as a weapon Use the soul as a weapon Use emotions, use words, use laws, use love Use it all up Throw it all away The thing we dreaded most has already happened We’re already living after the end of the world (Sung) I want to go back to the simple life with you I want to believe in a world without end I want to be strong and tender Be in love with my life like you I want to go back to the source I want all the children to have enough to eat I want all the children to give up the fight I want everyone to be happy and warm and safe and strong I want everybody to be loved
Prayers For Brilliant Blindnesses And Dangerous Teachers
oh dangerous god who never kills but only changes What is the difference between right and wrong oh god, father of the stagnant water and mother of the funny words I thought of while I was there All the things I believe in are wrong, and I know it, and yet I still have as much power as people who hate oh god sabotaging climaxes with your obscene abundance oh god of pure disappointment I want to say what can’t be said I want to live without opinions oh god of unnatural animals living in me like sex on other planets Give me a song about sex and war that shocks people so bad they pay me to stop suffering oh god who scorns all mediocre longing I am living without ulterior motives I have shut up until I had something to say So reward me now Give me dreams I can spend like money Give me an ego I can laugh at no matter how beautiful or stupid it is oh normal god who can’t hide your fear from me oh god of childhood eating up the mother and the father I have no wife and kids Tell me why I play with dolls and toys What am I waiting for oh nagging god who begs me to tease and not to fuck, to create and not to conquer you croaking reptilian two-faced teacher who inspires me only a little bit just to keep me hooked You can’t stop me if I want to imitate you You can’t abandon me if I free myself from looking for a woman who would complete me oh god of haunting facsimiles and hungry substitutes better than the original Once again I have proved my self-control Once again I’m becoming bigger than life and wilder than my fears forcing you to change all your teachings oh god of unlearned love and of heats and smells that go nowhere What am I trying to prove Who am I trying to impress oh sneaky, anguished god who can’t escape me no matter how much I heal I’m not the most dangerous person in the world or the most intelligent or the trickiest or the most spontaneous or the most anything Help me therefore to give myself away for free and to make things that last only by accident oh god of brilliant blindnesses and enemies who reawaken life I’m not myself So then who am I I want as much emotion as women I want to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation not destruction oh god of opening the negative world to me as I fall asleep on my birthday I can’t crave what I never hated oh god revealing to me my exact infinitesimal purpose in history at the weakest moment of a day when pleasure extinguishes my worship of the adolescent in women oh loose and yowling god of childbirth who saves all the best pleasure for women alone oh god of no hope for men who try too hard What hidden forces control me What if there are women who secretly want me What if I can give them nothing oh god of drowned worms and electricity leaking out my feet into the rain as I cry about the temper tantrums and obsessions I can no longer have with any conviction or joy oh backwards god, oh god of hoarding up feelings for years and then spitting them all out in one night oh intimate and delicate and precise god I’m afraid I might try to imitate myself I’m afraid I might try to live off the love I saved when I was too strong to love anyone oh god you pushy cruel generosity that gives people gifts too big for them to handle Prove to me that I don’t have to suffer in order to be creative Stop me from saving people who don’t even want to be saved oh too much god Am I influencing you yet Am I hurting your feelings oh crippled god of fascination and repulsion and nothing in between I’ll forgive you if you forgive me I’ll fake an emotion until it becomes real if you admit that’s how you create everything oh god of the usual mystery, god of no explanation, god of no good reason god of thousands of people who all have a different image of me oh imprisoned, fecund, crumbling god whom I have known for less than one hour oh god of muscles in the face twitching at unanswered emotions I never claimed I was a human being I never agreed to be raised by kind and gentle parents I never said I gave up being a dirty dog-headed god of the underworld flailing in the snow in North Carolina, dying brilliantly of LSD And if you don’t stop strangling yourself now where cunt meets cock I swear I’ll never do anything normal again I’ll make myself into a bomb, I’ll live without routine I’ll pretend I’m insane when I talk to considerate people in cafes in the middle of the day oh outmuscled god, outlived god, god drained of all human will oh end of god and beginning of a fierce alien tender ego in my heart with a face like yours but no name yet oh black solar heat of god at midnight love bomb god exploding from a dream impossible to translate, impossible to use on this earth Help me think up bigger, better, more original sins before you change forever into the perfect pungent flavor of cunt and disappear from this world where there are no real men oh best god in the world, happiest, funniest, hippest god I know you want me to be my biggest, most confused, greediest soul I know you want to give me the pleasure of thinking terrible things and having more flagrant desires than you could ever imagine alone So that I am still and always split in two So I know I am a man and a woman fighting it out in one and the same body just so I can stay attracted and excited by this life of never being born and not knowing how to die
