written on this day in history, 2/15/03

RED

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day;
red;
promotion of love day
I bought my early-Alzheimering mother
A mum (for mom) and a box of
Valentine cookies made with a
lot of red dye
and the white blossoms
of the potted plant had a little red
heart on the end of a stick
stuck down into the dirt;

Red;

during the day the United Nations
Security Council met and I heard
the French leader echo the words of
John Lennon, “We think we should
‘Give peace a chance’”
and then heard Bush’s minion Powell
argue lustily for war; I saw red;

Red;

On the day set aside for the
promotion of love
our government, established through
a theft of the presidency
aided by thrown-away votes for
a 3rd party candidate
talks of the irrelevancy of the
United Nations;
A banty rooster struts from podium
To podium, thrusts out his glass chin
And from his vapid head
mouthing words put there by charlatans,
Flanders Field ghost-writers,
tells it like it isn’t
as though it were;
and I see red;

red.

Finally on Valentine’s Day
I go to bed;
and in the middle of the night
I get up to go to the bathroom

And I feel my right nostril
is containing foreign matter;
sitting on the edge of the bed
I insert a finger and my nail
hooks onto a large serpentine booger;
I tug at it and it seems connected
somewhere deep within my head;

I am swamped by a clearer-headed
feeling as I begin to withdraw my finger,
thinking metaphorically
of some miraculous ousting of
George Bush from office,
when the blood gushes from my nose;

I jam my finger back into my nostril
and dash to the bathroom
where I shove a tissue in,
leaning over the sink,
and the blood dripped onto the
white porcelain,
and the soon-removed tissue
had a brilliant red crown on it;
my hands were bloody;
I saw some more red; blood
like that about to be shed by
the fiendish man
who claimed in his campaign
to be foremostly influenced
by Christ;
I saw red again;
on Valentine’s Day I saw

RED

[David Dix 2-15-2003]