Theses on the Philosophy of History

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Or: Listening to the Presidential Debate While Stuck in Traffic

1.

Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden Gate

Give my rage back to me, I know how to hold it

Ghost fog grows and stretches itself through the bars and I’m ready for it

On my radio, the white general and the white general

yank each other into the deep end, good heavens

Don’t teach me to hate my language tonight

Don’t teach me how to hate my words and my language tonight

Tongo says capitalism walks on water, I’ve seen my TV, I believe it

All of the redwoods in the world can’t keep this country from wanting to die

The future has arrived and it’s doubled over

and the best of us are ready for love though we’re burning

2.

Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden Gate

My family is Eduardo and Mitsuo and Marilyn and Alma

and Samuel and Fumio and the twin who drank himself to death

and the auntie who drank herself to death

and the Issei and the Nisei and the Sansei with their rock faces and nightmares

Undisguise me, said the stone

Undisguise me, said the stone to the desert light

Undisguise me, said the stone to the river

Lay me down under harsh water flowing under midnight starlight

Take my face off of my face, said the stone, shake me open

3.

Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden Gate

The white general and the white general

teach me how to hate my language on the radio tonight

Which nightmare of a framework makes the human count

Which bodies count and which count against

Grandma met Grandpa in those camps

Let me give your rage back to you, said the poem

Stop trying so goddamn hard, said the poem

Everything that has ever happened to you and your family

keeps happening and the love keeps coming in with its surgery

Get good with yourself, said the poem, get gone