The Pear
(For the “Tank Man” of Tiananmen Square, 6/5/89)
Golden gong, summer’s bell!
You hang from mature limbs
like the grocery bags the man lifts
in the video of Tiananmen Square:
it is the day after Chinese troops killed
hundreds of protesters there.
A row of tanks rumbles down the avenue.
A lone man appears:
he raises his arms in front of the steel Goliaths.
They stop.
Lurching right, he follows. Left, he follows.
A few onlookers cheer. All goes still.
He climbs onto the lead tank and a hatch opens:
the two speak of something we will never know.
He scrambles down as two men rush up,
muscling him into a crowd.
O jade lantern, ripened by un-censored light,
balanced on a shard of noon! I take you into me,
down to your last piece, as the film from your broken skin
glints on my small, sharp knife.
The Saab
Spineless Spicer looks as if a squid armed with
lady-razors races at him from a circus cannon;
Rumplestiltskin hides under his podium.
Though I was the last to know, at least she told me.
Who’ll tell Trump we caught his mouth lying around?
A vine can choke the branches but still it’s not the tree.
Of course we have a travel ban, and another wall.
A split-personality requires that
one side never find out about the others.
We’re as stupid now as when Chinese poet Tu-Fu
railed at corrupt officials and their handy wars!
Walt Disney’s mummy lies in a Kremlin vault.
Ask my friend Arthur about revolution.
“That S.O.B. would rant for hours with his dealer
while I sat freezing in the choking Saab.”
Thor, is it enough to call out these crooked leaders
when you still kneel at the stool of your private tyrant
re-stacking his collection of gold-plated vertebrae?