Poem by Allen Cohen
Flying to Washington, DC For A Reading
Taking off from Oakland
heading for Washington D.C.
and then New York for
Poets for a World at Peace reading.
Lifting over San Francisco Bay
its calmness a sheet of glass.
Sun Rising, golden light
slipping through gray clouds,
layers of fog and clouds
and different shades of blue sky.
Rising far above striated
cirrus clouds that look
like twisted strands of DNA.
From heights like this
bombs may soon drop on Iraq –
600 cruise missiles for first two days
to produce “shock and awe”
really meaning firestorms
bringing immense death and destruction
even while countries and their peoples
resist our president’s bellicose bullying
for the control of oil.
I wrote an email to Elz Cuya,
a fellow poet who writes sonnets,
that every moment is a peace march.
Why this drive to war and empire?
Even more than oil, is it a shield
for protecting the oligarchy
from the revelations of their corruption
in every corner of our country?
Collectively we have become as corrupt
as many third world dynasties.
The Sierras are covered with snow
white mountainous vision
reflecting sunlight.
The corporations invent
tax dodging tax schemes
and stock frauds, rape the environment
buy and bribe politicians and presidents
to construct the climate that will rain
more profits and power.
The church’s centuries of sexual repression
cloaking the rampant pedophilia of priests
stretching their clouds of guilt over history.
The desert below beige, barren and expansive
between the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains.
The insurance companies, with the collusion
of doctors and HMOs defrauding Medicare
for over 75 billion dollars per year and
seeking to avoid lawsuits for their mistakes.
The corporate drive for cheap labor
spreading its tentacles all over the world
destroying cultures, childhood and environments.
All the worlds money and resources pouring
through the sieve of their hidden bank accounts.
While poverty and plagues sweep over the world
the drug companies resist researching medicines
for third world disease and
fight to keep their patents and profits.
The western Rockies stretch out below
toward the snow capped mountains of the east.
The media conglomerates soaking us
in propaganda in the interests of the corporations
that own them or pay their sky-high salaries.
The scientists at Los Alamos building nuclear weapons
stealing money, materials
and perhaps information
from their erudite perch in the desert.
No part of the oligarchy
without guilt or complicity.
The rest of us have only our frustrations
poverty, sickness, insecurity, high rents
homelessness and their passion
and even that smothered
by the pressures of survival
and the somnambulance
and brainwashing of TV and movies,
while conglomerates suck up
the national wealth and this criminal junta
crawling toward domination or impeachment.
targets more money for the rich.
And what are we to do?
March, demonstrate, write poems
and diatribes to each other,
block doorways, break windows
fantasize uprisings and get arrested?
The plane shakes and shudders
we fly over cities and then the Appalachians
brown and shorn of trees and spotted
with icy lakes and streams.
Finally a smooth descent to Dulles Airport
landing in the icy capital
temperatures below zero.
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