Alan Britt (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: Alan Britt has published 25 books of poetry and was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. His latest books are Emergency Room and Guilty Pleasures. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

 

BLAST FROM THE PAST

(For Little Gloria)

A paint by numbers clown

with plum cheeks

& avocado mittens, as I recall,

eager to distract 

chaotic youth from 

their terrifying future—

well, this clown rang me up 

at the Belvedere Market,

today, while the assistant manager, 

scrunching his nuts & thundering 

an aluminum cart of canned 

vegetables down a two-basket 

aisle, remained oblivious to a pallet 

of dairy rotting in receiving,

plus pessimistic produce passing 

romantic secrets across political 

aisles declaring that the earth 

is stronger than human will, 

& that’s all there is to it,

(according to Little G).

A paint by numbers clown

with plum cheeks

& avocado mittens, as I recall.

***

THE NEW MILLENNIUM, OR ULTIMATE ASTROLOGY

With children at the cannons and blood dripping down palace walls.

This is how we welcome the new millennium, shock collars secure

and our morals terrified of doing the right thing.

There are only so many ways of saying this, but for the sake

of sanity, albeit Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus SUVs, 

let us pray for emancipated icons not superglued

to our barnacle-encrusted souls.

Let us breach like humpbacks above the foam of questions

that the zeitgeist covets as its own.

High money does not buy us time, but since time is all we really have.

But who will lead the disinherited?

Who, indeed?

Who will waddle the flames of injustice?

Who will deflect military satellites probing their conical noses

into our bedrooms, injecting paranoia into our classrooms,

and demanding that we come to the aid of our country when 

all the while the blood that flows down palace walls is the same blood 

that flows down congressional columns.

Think about it.

Congressmen and congresswomen weasel their way down 

the columns of newspapers owned by their incognito handlers.

But it’s time, don’t you think?

Time to reconsider what we really stand for?

It’s time, I say, to recognize that political bedbugs 

are nothing more than archaic astrology.

 

Time to suspend our disbelief long enough to dream the Trail 

of Tears before our alarm clocks shock us to antiseptic attention.

So much for the irony that sus(stains) us.

***

I’M A BELIEVER

If hands are wings then take hold

& prepare for the long flight, the flight 

to shatter everything meaningful 

on this wobbly planet while discovering

that other planets have been playing

this game a whole lot longer than we

ever dreamed of playing it.

If emotions in some future hieroglyphic  

universe in some galaxy far far away—

empathetic hieroglyphs to be sure—

if those emotions hatched their existential 

eggs upon my kitchen counter this very

morning, well then, I guess I’d have 

to be a believer; I’d have to believe.

***

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Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023