Gery Pieret

in a small room

in the basement of The Louvre

near a sleepy guard

i took possession of a 

small stone head

which was chiseled

white and brown

without apparent prejudice

in a tribal way far less modern

but no less real

than a working windmill

near the Bateau Lavoir

and it must have been

close to 1907 at all events

and i was hungry and inspired

and put the statue under my arm

arranged my heavy coat

raised my collar

walked out silently

and that is how i remember it

before i sailed for California

and became a cowboy

riding on an Apollinaire saddle

into the surreal sunset of a western sky.

"Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch!"

a Kennedy is dead, but which one?
the shooting was in the news,
it was American made,
and the FBI searched low and high,
but found not a single straight line.
immediately, a law and order shout
smacked into the crowd of angry people,
caused the ensuing phenomenon,
and all the screaming
political conventioneers
became delirious.
red blood ran in the streets to become the color of dried blood.
i remember George Wallace carried the deep south
with his Atlas racist mouth
while his running mate, Curtis LeMay, had sensible people
running for newly built nuclear bomb shelters.
so who had the bigger button?
later, Nixon, the tricky political junkie who
overdosed on his own hubris,
conjured ghosts of the Civil War from a foggy bottom
while tripping over weathered confederate tombstones,
yelling into his hot line to the war criminal
Kissinger, a fancy secretary of state
interested solely in his own legacy.
Gerald Ford as president acted like an old
pickup truck burning morning toast
although there was that thing with East Timor,
and the pardon and pardon me for mentioning it.
and skipping ahead, Donald Trump lost the popular vote
but became a celebrity apprentice and commander-in-chief
with his small hands and big mouth
cursing shit hole people who
seemed proud to be from shit hole countries
other than Manhattan, New York, America.
he won an election, barely, taking his hairy comb-over to the top floor
of the white house,
along with his kids and Michael Richard Pence of Indiana!
and this should have terrified everyone:
tolerance and equality started acting like flushed poop,
swirling down in a purple haze,
like a last breath with Jimi playing his crazy guitar,
his teeth biting into the Star Spangled Banner
like angry victims of mindless prejudice.
i remember i wore my sandals to Vietnam,
as it was hot in southeast Asia in the late 1960's,
and i brought them home in one piece
in the early 1970's, after the Embassy attack,
but couldn't get anyone to autograph them.
i'm still asking for signatures, wondering why
so many of my contemporaries didn't become more liberal,
but then neither did their parents, so the upbringing was successful.
old prejudices never die,
like old soldiers
they just fade away,
along with the hippies from Woodstock
and the Summer of Love.
once, we all heard Lyndon Johnson say "i will not seek and i will not accept..."
and then he died at his ranch in Texas, old and alone except for Lady Bird,
long after Jack Kennedy died in Dallas, with Jackie by his side,
not too terribly far to the north.
i heard someone shout
and it was again suddenly the summer of 1968,
"Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch,
you lousy motherfucker, go home," and i was in Chicago
and Richard Daley, the city mayor, moved his thin scoundrel lips
as he sat with his henchmen under the hot air balloons
stretched to limits unusual for a Democratic convention!
he displayed some nerve
as he drew a sharp white finger across his throat:
he looked directly at Senator Ribicoff!
so who had the bigger button?

his red beret

with a yellow sun and a brilliant green sky,
this small village
on the Mediterranean coast of France
has blue boats and streaks of hot sand

fish in wet nets at dawn on a busy beach

deep-teal color in the harbor's water.

a tall man wearing his red beret
carries two easels,
one with tiny points of paint across the stretched canvas.

his wife sits in a rented room.

old cobbled streets

a steep hill to climb,
and a narrow view from the open window.

Collioure,
summer of 1905:

warm!

and it rained in July.

Vlaminck held the letters which he read
over and over:
the wild beasts had escaped!
one certain mustache,
unshaven,
pipe in mouth;
another with glasses the better to see invisibility.

unnatural minds,
looking without success for dark shadows
while finding light,
intensely,
vividly,

pointing to open space on a splendid line,
while the fish were eaten whole.