This poem and image was originally published November 20, 2024 by Oddball Magazine. Editors calling it “a monster piece.”
The Black Box of America
Few people called a spade a spade
before the country went up in flames.
-Anon
No one missed that country
Men were soft, angry, and violent
Life was brutal and unforgiving
Pretentious and vacuous
Decisions and mutations were cut
in candle-lit back rooms, women were victims
They grabbed what they wanted
Fooled by the same illusion driving men, CONTROL
In apocalyptic bunkers
Dark physicians sang Odes to depression
Men were sheep and folded quickly
Not crying, but telling
Terrifying stories of bad things
Children were frightened and dogs were wild
No one cared about their neighbor
Everyone pretended at everything
The winner’s faces were tan, they lifted weights
Arenas were filled with men and women
Fighting women and men
Everything broke except the glass ceiling
Yuppies kept on building, kept sailing
Went on painting their ceilings
White, of course,
Ignorantly marched toward the future
They cheered the New Year
Hell, everyone cheered the New Year
And drove ATV’s and big boats
Rednecks toasted Monster Trucks as they mashed tiny Japanese cars
Christians decorated Christmas trees in suburban homes
To shots of Irish Crème or Asti
They drank while listening to strains of Bing Crosby’s
White Christmas on their stereo
They made yellow popcorn strings and dutifully attached them to the Green branches.
A ritual ‘round a tree,’ but nobody knew why
There were no ritual elders, there was no ritual wisdom
There was no embodiment of grace
After New Year’s celebrations and narcissistic resolutions
And the dark, wasted days of another empty year,
They awoke bored, helpless, angry at mothers and fathers
Sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, children and in-laws
The population chugged bourbon in the afternoon
And on vacation, they counted numbers in their bankbooks
Children were confused, scared, frozen
Occasionally they trusted a teacher
Once they trusted a priest, just once
But in time, their trust was betrayed
Their faces, tight and alarmed
They suffered daily with headaches and stomachaches
Kids starved for attention
But they got dollar bills
Parents screamed at them
Hurt and eating hot dogs
A 21st Century Recipe For Disaster:
Take a young man and put him in a high-powered car. Let him ignore the seat belt. Mix in liberal amounts of beer.
Add a young woman
Make her blonde.
Tweak the ego, cover until dark
Install a throbbing car stereo with a good bass speaker mounted under
the steering wheel, below his ass.
Play loud, pulsating music, with pounding drums.
Stir in a full moon and a hot summer night.
Wait an hour for blood
Graduates wanted to get high and stay high
If they made it through their violent schools and
Their hormone driven bad decisions
They’d go to work and come to hate it
In a short time, they knew what Agnew-knew
A shadow man of the Capitalist meat grinder
Deceive! Deceive! Deceive!
Lesson two: Deny! Deny! Deny!
They learned the work-force sucks
They met bosses that took advantage of them
Plastics? Silicone? Why hurry?
The lucky ones left high school and went to Europe for a while
Some went to Central America
Most came back
Then, they went to work or college
They cheated and copied, read books and collected information
The myth of the progressive American story
Education on how to act like one acted when pretending to make a living
Most of the world ignored them
They were angry
College became a second childhood
And many took advantage of freedom
Discernment was not necessary; they were the protected by “freedom”
They were the future and the dreamy naïve embodiment of the dream
Naivete is a terrible thing
“You left us…You don’t understand the humiliation of it — to be tricked out of the assertion which makes our existence viable –that somebody was watching….
We’re actors. . . We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of our trade that someone would be watching. . .”
Rozencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead
Others went to work and poured chemicals on trees and lawns
At the homes of doctors and lawyers and CEO’s
They changed asbestos padded brakes on Toyotas and Fords
They worked retail or service jobs and picked up garbage
Slowly poisoning themselves during the week
They picked up the pace and
Poisoned themselves quicker on weekends
Massive amounts of alcohol and drugs
Anything to escape the alienation of mindless
Meaningless acquisition, consumption, and distribution of junk
Neil Young wailed that it was all, “a piece of crap”
He was not right, but correct
Other workers sat for hours in stale offices
Breathing recycled and dusty air, perhaps moldy
Their sitting a testament to duty and responsibility
They died slowly and took risks with motor vehicles
The living, as few as they were, felt the decline
They kept dutifully driving to work
They were good boys and girls, they drove nicely
Threw a butt out the window and changed the radio station
Their clothes smelled of tobacco and stale Mennen
Some days they hit a pothole in the road
Spilling their morning coffee on white shirts
It pissed them off
They arrived at the office
Harried and coffee-stained
Pumped on caffeine drinks, high on hype
They had money but were unhappy
Politicians ruled for themselves
Middle-class men bought vanity license plates for their Buicks or Fords
Some messages could only be read by looking through a mirror
Everything seemed that way
Conservatives had power and lived
Under the illusion of their success by hard-headed financial decisions
Not up to the task of understanding
Hegemony or complex cultural prejudices
They scoffed at liberals for their “sensitivities”
And called them “bleeding hearts”
Waging war, they believed Q and called themselves courageous
They made numerous bad decisions — taking us all down
There was no unbent, unfettered, clear message
From anyone about anything
Confusion was king, discernment was a pauper
Counterculture wore beat-up shoes and carried a dull pencil
Police were corrupt, no respect
Beat up minorities and abused hookers
Threw their weight around
Music was attack: Clash, War, Sex Pistols
Religion was slow to act, or mostly mute
Clergy stood for nothing, their words, like snowflakes
Bishops were impotent and grey
Out of touch, their debates were not theological
They were not prophetic, not important to
Anyone but themselves
They kept talking
Nobody was listening
Sermons were delivered without passion
Churches became a backward cesspool of navel-gazing
Repeatedly they asked who they were
Empty self-importance bound to Machiavellian preservation
Nobody cared while
Cults flourished and counseled mass suicide
As their final rebellion
Unabomber, Unacult — same thing
On weekends, everybody smiled for the camera
Took videos of their weddings and spent
Lots of money for greasy food
And a cheap drunk
Their friends came to the wedding
Pretended to approve, while drinking and eating
They smelled beefy. They burped, farted and
Early in the morning, screwed sloppy and numb
Sunday, they sweated their hangovers by mowing the lawn
Monday morning, they’d shave, shower, and shit
Then put on a suit for eight hours
Sever their body from conscious existence
Slippery and obese: Their badge, hard work
It was the sanctioned path
The model of success, the way of perfection
Image was all, substance was nil
They worked hard and lied to the camera (It never blinked)
They were Teflon coated, and found it kept the dogs at bay
“The motherfuckin’ dogs are in the street.”
Gil Scott Heron
But one hour into work they were stabbing one another in the back
A sickness, a greed, a get-back-by
Stealing enough to be a felon if caught
It was a nasty world, yet everyone wanted more
More sickness did not cure sickness
Everyone wanted to be a winner
They were driven
“America is loud and nasty. It sells you a cheap bag of
oranges, and steals your seat on the bus.”
Franz Schumann
Competition increased
Manic, crazy, oppressive energy
Won spoils for the conquerors
They kept collecting
The government manipulated us by computer
No one answered the phone at the IRS
English became American
Westerners searched for answers in the Tao Te Ching
Water was polluted, so was our outlook
Food was poisoned
The air putrid
We hung on to lies
Clung to the illusions of grandeur and progress
America was back (Ray-gun said)
Always propaganda, always propaganda
More propaganda . . . the virus was fake
Dogs became rabid and everyone drank bad water
Republicans called on the family
Democrats called on the village
They didn’t realize it was all rotten
Congressional baboons hated the other side
And preached righteousness in their positions
Politicians were rotten to the core and three witches
Told us “Foul is fair and fair is foul.” But there was no fair
Stealing and lying and cheating was all
Spiritual sickness, a disease of heart to the core
Even the preachers cried out in angst –
“I can’t take it anymore!”
Worn-out furniture salesmen went to seminary
Joined the clergy and slowly died of disappointment
But. . . clergywomen and clergymen weren’t much different than anyone
All were flavored with baggage collapsing into old sofas
We were as the towns were
Sleepy, middle age, metaphysically dead
Towns were as suburbs, cities, villages
Professors landed tenure; voices lost in the cacophony
Young people kept marrying. . . often in Vegas
At the Elvis Presley Chapel of Love.
Searching for a dream
That turned into nightmare
Marry in Vegas, divorce in Reno
The world was perfectly arranged
The myth lived; mystery died
The interpreters were ignored
The lovers fought
The proceedings were angry and combative
Lawyers profited and ate lobster
Pious defense and prosecution
Placating white professionals
Called it work and later laughed about it at the bar
Couples left their marriages to join once again but
Remained unconscious
Equally blind as their previous marriage
A coupling formed by back-seat myth
Driven by need
And at the end of it all
Everyone projected aggression
Golf was popular and ridiculous
Big men rode a golf cart over green grass
To get in touch with the country
Ancient long-lost battlefields and farms
They put traps and trees on the course to create a challenge
The golf course and the country club reminded
How they used to fox hunt, tend an English garden
Slice the head from a cobra or brave a battlefield
What little Wisdom existed on the Continent
Was imprisoned on the Indian Reservations
Many drunk or depressingly impoverished
They lived outdoors, mostly
They said caring for animals is necessary for mental health
They said picking wild berries cures mental illness
Too deep for Freud, Jung, or Menninger
Too foolish for the Financial District or Wall Street
Nobody listened and nobody followed
But they did their artwork: carving, weaving, planting, shearing
They shot deer and caught trout whenever they wanted
And said, “Fuck the BIA.”
But in those places
When the whites tried to access their wisdom
Medicine men saw them coming
And shape-shifted into crows or ravens and fly
Maybe change into a snake, slide under a red rock
They didn’t want to talk to us, and who could blame them
They knew the empty ones were unbalanced
Thirsted for dark trivia and the kill
The empty ones lacked wisdom
Burned for more knowledge
More facts, more dogs and cats
Evermore numbers
EVERMORE trivia
EVERMORE chemistry/drugs
EVERMORE bits and bytes
EVERMORE sweet, plastic, fast food
They thought shit
They ate shit
They became shit
For EVERMORE
They had no wisdom
Knowledge trapped them in the dead zone
A deepening maze of illusion
And of all insanity, Zombies were popular
Many thought suicide was a way out
And it became
Like many things in that world
An option
“The souls of the Suicides are encased in thorny trees whose leaves are eaten by the odious HARPIES, the overseers of these damned.
Inferno
The foliage was not verdant, but nearly black
The unhealthy branches gnarled, wrapped, and tangled
Gave poison instead of fruit
Nothing new since 62, a Silent Spring
“The track of those wild beasts that shun the open spaces
runs through no rougher no more tangled places.
Here nest the odious Harpies of whom my Master
Wrote how they drove Aeneas and his companions
From the Strophades with prophecies of disaster
Their wings are wide, their feet clawed, their huge bellies
Covered with feathers, their necks and faces human
They croak eternally in the unnatural trees.”
Inferno Canto XIII
The smoke and mirrors of self-importance
The riddle of job descriptions and performance reviews
The abomination of economics as god
The enigma of meaningful work
It was a meaningless economic meat grinder
Appendices to the empty well of self-sufficiency
Punished men and women with harsh lessons
Nothing their Hebrew Law had not already recorded
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
Jeremiah 31
Children on edge, schools no safe zone
Women on edge, bodies under attack
Men on edge, competition and guns just out the door
All dancing the razor’s edge
Anxiety was the number one gross national product
The fathers ate and were consumed
The grapes were sour, there was no ‘City of God’
Their wineskins remained small, shrunk like their hearts and minds
The rend was theirs, it was total
Lamentations lodged in sons to
Magnifying the fathers’ worst tendencies
Nobody could stop abuse anywhere
Could not stop It
Could not stop MONSANTO
Could not stop
Anything
Joy, a lost art, they complained
Ached daily to mend the tear
And would have done so
Had they known what was real
Dreams were balm
They were also terror
They surfed the net, shopped online
Drove through Mc Donalds
They hated other lives –
A projection of their own anemia –
Entertained themselves to death
Pretended to have a purpose
The full moon
The solar eclipse
The comet above
The cyber-world, or the material-world?
“Qui peut dire le faux et le reel?”
They forgot how to work their bodies
Only the neo-Luddites chopped wood
And they lived in distant forests
Didn’t bother with cutting their hair
Carried water, darned their sox by battery light
Bathed in the creek, used their urine on their plants
They were few — the non-religious — Green
They recycled, reused, reduced
Cooperation, too big a word
Fight, a small word, was understood
They couldn’t look anyone in the eye
Didn’t trust another soul — silence of the lambs –
Didn’t appreciate nature and the mystery of others
They judged, and put it all down
Away, underfoot
Elections fixed nothing
The shooting became random and more menacing
Teens, elders, and those in the middle
Going Postal; Mass Shootings
They killed families first, then strangers, then children, then themselves
It was hot, brutish, and short
The cops were busy
Jails were full
Profiteers made money
The President lied
All the Presidents lied
They lied all the time
Men lied, women lied, children lied, everyone lied
American dogs and cats were fat
Most of the world was skinny
New diseases emerged
Viruses mutated
People were ill
Their medicine tried to adapt
The Third World didn’t have a chance
And the Earth was molting for a change
But remnants of the human family lived on
Became ambient inheritors of grief
Carried from generations long gone
Covered In Cold Blood — like a book
Mine? Perhaps a Viking massacre
Somewhere in the Highlands
Steel and memory of black stones
Covered In Cold Blood, like a murder
Many secrets buried in Midwestern
North American cemeteries
Underground blood sagas
Formed a prologue
Sometimes seekers went there for a vision
To read the night sky
Gather a lost clan and an occult story
Imagine remnants, runes, and mysteries
Pose questions to the silence
An owl swooping low
Hooks wisdom by a claw, the mouse staggering sextillion infidels
Carries to a dead tree
Someone carves the moment on the wall — it’s bloody
All final moments are bloody, and all
Bleed into this
Black Box of the last world
Mercury, winged ambassador, friend of thieves
And robbers, keeper of secrets, guards the box
Until a worthy seeker asks the right questions
Finds the map-key
This seeker must be Black
They must be White too, and Brown
Red inside, and they will have been stretched
The lapis philosophical will be in their stomach.
“For as fire is tested in gold,
So too, are worthy ones in the
crucible of humiliation.”
Sirach 5
Some pounded distant shores in pursuit of the Jan Path
Fed by jasmine’s nectar in India’s gardens, rice of China, or
Succulent Navajo pears hidden on buttes
A few sought delight and fulfillment
In new ways with old medicines
Mixture of flesh and spirit
They craved art that was more than whitewash
Beyond covering of dead-men’s tombs
Some took up myth busting
Tried to tear down the walls of deceit
It was vocation, redemption
For New Man and New Woman:
To embrace ecstatic in nature
Or a flower received/given
Eat from the garden of dirt, old food, real food, not Buffalo Wings
There was no Goddamn Buffalo Wing ever, anywhere
Writing a letter when a letter was due
Taking care of debt and bad business deals
Organizing their lives, jettisoning the worthless crap
Earning less and giving less to the war machine
Fixed the old things, recycled plastic, read the labels at the store
Supported FARM AID, ignored hand sanitizer
Worked within their limited range of influence
Accepted that which they could not change
There was still plenty wrong
Oh, there was plenty wrong
Wrong with the state
Wrong with the family
Wrong with the environment
Wrong with commerce
Wrong with government
Wrong with people
Plenty wrong with everything
The Black Box recorded it
Some became conscious and began
Registering all decisions they made
A turning away could not sustain a posture for living
The needle moved a little
All those Mother Joneses’
All those painters and fixers
All those recyclers
All those Myth-busters
All those story-tellers
All those reading
All those thinking
All those making local decisions
All those riding bicycles
All those tapping natural energy
All those making music
All those listening
All those walking
All those meditating
All those practicing Yoga
All those keeping pledges
All those relaxing
All those taking herbs and acupuncture
All those bailing on the bruising, busted, boisterous business world
All those canoeing
All those and more
It’s only a little.
Still
“Call a spade,”
Gil Scott Heron said
“A motherfuckin spade.”
Gregory Ormson: writes of yoga, motorcycling, landscapes and culture, and anything not trending.
Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well a school psychologist. She loves hiking the urban and woodland trails of “anywhere” (and pausing often to shoot photos) with her very patient husband (and often collaborator), Ted. Her images have been featured on the covers of magazines such as Ibbetson Street, Wild Roof Journal, Poesy Magazine, Humana Obscura, and Arkansas Review; as well as on the pages of publications such as Oddball Magazine, Ember Chasm Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Beaver Magazine, and Lateral. Her works are archived at institutions such as Poets House NYC, Brown University, and Harvard University.
Rod Rinell says
Mercury was also the god of tricksters.
Resurrection is always a surprise presence.
You weave a profound story.
A turn, a presence, narrative; and there is hope.
Greg Ormson says
Rod, are you the student at TLS I met in Columbus years ago?