Raw Footage
--after
Leonard Cohen
I was sitting watching the news
and there were bombings and killings and all the usual kinds
of violence
being perpetrated against innocent people in all parts of
the world
and they were talking about this 16 year old Palestinian boy
who had strapped explosives around his waist
so that he could blow up some Israeli guards at the border
crossing
and I was wondering what could make someone so young so
desperate
and then they told us how the kids had all made fun of him
because he was short
how he was promised 23 dollars and 7 virgins if he blew
himself up
and then they brought his mother and she was crying and complaining
about the people who take advantage of children
the most vulnerable of the vulnerable in this sick sad world
and I asked myself how a people could become so hopeless
that they had so little left in this life, that they had
given up everything
that the last and only thing they had to offer was the only
way
they could imagine that there was even a glimmer of hope
that they would get out of
this situation that had kept them prisoners for so many
years
I was reading a book about the holocaust
and there was pain and suffering and pathos beyond the
capacity of human endurance
and I remembered a time when I was a child of 6 or 7 years
old
I was at a friend’s house and there was a movie playing on
the TV
and I watched as a roomful of women holding babies and young
children were herded naked into showers
and when the spigots were turned on there was gas instead of
water
and I watched in horror as the women held on tight to their
children
in their one last gasp of motherly love
and the pain was so great that I closed my eyes and wished
that I hadn’t been there in that room at that time but the image by then was so
seared into my memory
that even today as I write these words, as I wonder how much
misery
could be caused in name of politics and power
the pain is still so great that I consider ending my life
just to stop it, just to ease it just a little bit
because so many people have suffered, so many people are
still suffering at the hands of the greedy
for reasons that even the wildest animals could not comprehend
I was walking down Constitution
Avenue
in this capitol of the free world
where the archives of democracy are housed in a museum not
far from here
where the president of this great country resides in this not-so-great
era of our history
and I came upon a man huddled by a fire wrapped in an oily,
grimy cloth
and I looked beyond the feigned smile and the request for
spare change
I looked into his vacant eyes and his hollow face and I saw
raw fear
draped over his frail frame like a pall
the face of a man who was enduring the last indignity
in a long line of indignities his people had faced when they
were wrested from their villages
when they were shackled and sold and beaten and stripped of
every ounce of humanity
and I looked in his eyes and I saw myself
and I thought this could be me lying in the street hungry
and cold
this could be my son, my daughter, my wife, my mother, my
friend
it could be you my friend
it could be anyone of you, lying out there helpless and
destitute
wondering what angry god could have allowed any and all of this
to happen
I was sitting at my desk writing a poem
or a story or some other piece of nonsense
that some venerable publication might see fit to print
between its pristine covers
and I was thinking that maybe I could make a difference
that maybe we
could make a difference
that maybe we could do something about the pain
other than write poems or sing songs or paint pictures
or talk about it over cocktails or huffed over a hot mug of
Starbucks
or hiding behind our newspapers in our cozy cafes
while the homeless and the destitute parade outside
like ghosts, invisible in their veils of pain
because it could be you my friend, yes you
or the person sitting beside you or the person sitting across
the room
take a look now, stand up, walk around, try to feel your
neighbor’s pain
because we are all in this together my friends
because my friends as we share this moment now
we are all getting closer to that time when we will eventually
be in pain
whether we become destitute or homeless or maybe lose a
spouse or a loved one or maybe you’ll wake up one morning and find yourself
alone looking in the mirror
asking yourself what have I done with my life, wondering
where all the friends are
as you pick up the razor blade and wonder whether you should
use as directed
or to make one simple cut across the flat of your wrist
instead
And I want you to promise me my friends, that when you leave
here tonight
while you’re going home by yourself or with your loved one
or with your friend
and you come upon someone who is in pain
maybe one of the homeless that live just behind this
building
or the woman who has been abused by her husband
or the teenager who’s selling his body on the street corner
because he ran away from home and doesn’t know any other way
to survive
or the man who is recklessly shooting his gun because he
lost his job, or his wife or his best friend to some incomprehensible act of
violence
or the street whore who hides her wretchedness behind a
patina of heavy makeup
when you see any of these people I hope that you will go
beyond your shrugged shoulder or your offer of spare change or your attempts to
assuage your guilt
that you will do something bigger and braver to help ease
the pain of your brothers and sisters
And if you promise me this tonight my friends, then maybe,
just maybe, for just once
in these long, miserable, painful 52 years
I might get just one complete night of rest.
From deMockracy, Copyright 2007 Mike Maggio
PALESTINIAN
DRIVER -- NEW ORLEANS
drives the
trolley
along the
riverfront
past Toulouse and Canal
this stop the
French Quarter
next stop Cafe
du Monde
greets
passengers
from the
riverwalk
wistful smile
thirty years
from Jerusalem
City of God
here in the
City of Sin
Palestinian
driver
faithful lover
peers at the
tracks
caresses the
controls
rolls graceful
in unison with
the trolley
turns toward me
for brief
remembrances of time
on the West Bank
of the Jordan
points to the West Bank
of the Mississippi
applies the
brakes
helps
passengers off
assists
newcomers on
along the
riverfront
rich earthy
face
old-world
facade
balconies dense
with irises
cathedral
nestled in Jackson Square
this trolley
with reversible
wooden seats
this man
transplanted
screeches with
age
plies like
Sisyphus condemned
back and forth
back and forth
one trolley
one man
stranded in time
here on the
riverfront
in the city
where life
yawns heedlessly at the sky
Low on Water
Briefly wishful, the industrial grass
wilted no water no sun no powerful radiation
rays
no epoch nervous clouds of sorts the near-death experience no waifs
no humans no beds no apartments just appalling darkness obsessed
darkness uncontested darkness and
we along often chased cheerfully blinded a morsel of persia a
morsel of withered land an iguana a
rubber band and flesh a dish a
screw a paper clip an arid crack of soil a hundred and twelve
and and
from
Let’s Call It Paradise, Copyright
2022 by Mike Maggio
