Ash Lands

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Taking in again the restaurant broiler burnt fat smell on my skin,
charcoal under my nails from a place I worked 1973—burnt Chile smell
in my head when I cooked, I remember the long dinner rush
—it never leaves your head—1973 Chileans
rounded-up, corralled into the soccer stadium concentration camp,
over a thousand disappeared
taking the wrong street home—Richard Nixon
was their Leopold II, Henry Kissinger was their Hermann Goring.
I’m recounting that night with my no-sleep look after a split shift—
someone should have insomnia about it,
someone should make a mountain out of another
“petty international squabble” multi-corporate mole hill,
someone should ride the one tricycle wheel of what’s left
of the first amendment and give it
whatever the road can bear.

Twelve years later I’m eating eggs-up next to the Billy Idol of Ash Land.
I admire his belt with cartridges, I admire his pointed metal studs
wrist band—
in our Ash Land you ran going through Gardner Park,
canvas deck shoes all I’d wear for a year after the beating outnumbered
in Gardner—when I wore boots
they were zippered, cheaper than motorcycle boots, more flexible
for running—and we rationalized guys in motorcycle boots looked rank,
who was going to go up your leg wearing those clunky-ass looking things? Snickering assholes in black tankers we made them feel like shit,
we made them feel like they weren’t themselves—
in black tankers we sat low in pants
that gripped everything that counted, we thought so, we fantasized
out loud about this one’s tight skirt, that one’s full sweater,
their unreachable shapes mesmerism
tearing everything else out of our minds.

Twelve years later I’m passing the salt to Ash Land Billy Idol,
that imitator, those brass knuckles hanging on a chain,
his white motorcycle boots of androgyny, though he looked a little mean underneath his androgyny—his girl friend, her sleeping bag tied
through back belt loops—platinum eye brows, platinum fur steel hooped
belly button vine sprung over the folded-down copper fly snap,
fish-hook necklaces, black finger nails contempt for the adaptation mosquitoes I too scorn—I don't think they diagnose the disease
they’re sick of, or even care to, I don’t think they believe the conflicts
will be resolved, too many global banking crews with their graveyard-gravetaste mass-grave sexuality money—too many
of their private armies
fixing everyone's conflicts now.

In our Ash Land, our night, in black tankers, our kick-boxing moves, a black force, our black shells, our natural light—the London firebombing-Hiroshima-Nagasaki documentaries were part of our head-sets already,
we lived with World War One widows in our four-plex,
World War Two concentration camp freak-out survivors outside
our bakery-delicatessen window,
families disappeared in Ukrainian, Polish, Russian pogroms,
Russian Gulags, Russian madhouses, Czar of Russia-Czar Stetsko
of Ukraine-Croatia Czar Pavelic was their Stalin before Stalin during Stalin,
Pope Pius the twelfth was their Tomas de Torquemada,
Ukrainian Cossacks were their Ku Klux Klan,
Ukrainian Cossacks were there 323 year My Lai Massacre—

a genealogy part this—
that neighborhood mostly short-lived machinists, salesmen, seamstresses, waitresses, a few teachers, a couple social workers,
the Saturday matinee pedophile with a cane—

that historical street, that Ash Land, that ongoing,
we combed our hair in mirrors that returned no blessings—

nose rings hadn’t happened yet, pierced lips and nipples “body art,”
head-bangers, crack-heads, teenage cutters, ten-year-old needle freaks
hadn’t happened yet—

tattooed Gypsy and Russian skins crafted—crafted—into gloves
were the bitch-fuck of Buchenwald’s history already, the Idi Amin/Pol the Pot/Condoleza the Rice/Saddam the Hussein-Human Bakery wasn’t
over yet—

the million-something Iraqis dead ten years sanctions withheld medical supplies hadn’t finalized its plan yet—

I hadn’t had the compassionate hallucination of Jesus
nursing a dying Muslim drag queen yet—

the massacres-mass disappearances in Guatemala, the Arab final solution version ongoing, the morning the photos the bombing the Lebanese civilians, the Warsaw ghetto of Palestinians hadn’t begun yet—

Death Squad de-brained Salvadoran priests raped nuns hadn’t sunk in yet—
Croatian Nazis hung with strings of Serbian tongues, Croatian Nazis returning with bowls of Serbian eyes for sale 1941, not a Bosnian Muslim
would blame them 2001—
Nestle the Terrible hadn’t poisoned to death successive generations of infants
in Africa yet—

the corporate corpsing ritual hadn’t fully surfaced yet—

the meltdown at Chernoby seventy-thousand something leukemia
cases not reported yet—and I kept my family inside during
the winds of Chernobyl—who knows how much it mattered, like it matters—

it was already history Salvatore Dali, with those dexadrinal eyes, walking his pet aardvark onto the Johnny Carson Tonight Show
during the bombing of Cambodia—

I hadn’t experienced the actualities and phantasms
of impermanence yet, the end sooner than later—

the meat hook hanging over the 20th century
wasn’t full yet—

the book with Hitler’s adulation of Disney hadn’t been written yet—
the story of Hitler oftentimes absent-mindedly whistling “Who’s Afraid
of the Big Bad Wolf,” that he watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs repeatedly hadn’t been mentioned yet—

that smart-aleck AP student remarking: “Snow White?
Snow White? Like who did Hitler identify with
the poison apple?,” hadn’t been blurted out yet—

the book recounting that Ivan the Terrible the serial gang rapist serial murderer was an excitable fan of jesters and clowns
hadn’t been published yet—
the American torture addicts after the Iraqi torture addicts hadn’t arrived
in Abu Ghraib yet—

the normalcy of pathology hadn’t completely made its case yet—

I’m talking with Billy Idol’s fist, his bracelet of steel pins,
his pit-bull smirk—

the guy with black plastic bags outside the coffee shop
begging on the pissed ground—

curses against U.S.-Israeli bombing of Lebanese civilians graffiti the stucco wall that will eventually, temporarily, get white-washed over—but wash, blood wash, no wash, it will still be there in the peoples’ faces.