"Another Police Riot" and "Go Bag for the Final Apocalypse."

Another Police Riot

 “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I
am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of
             morality.”

— James Baldwin

The NYPD vomited 
out of armored trucks
black as the horses of 
Lorca’s Guardia Civil:
brutality of batons, 
tear gas breathing dragons.
 
They beat punched kicked 
the world's new rootless
who renounce boundaries,
the wide-eyed youth
who claim no nation but 
humanity. 
 
Today it is Palestine. 
Tomorrow 
they will come 
for all the rest 
of the malcontents,
the simply different, 
the impious, the malingering poor.
 
What is to be done?
You say you want
a revolution?
 
                        §
 
I was not there. I'm writing 
in a chair  in a coffee shop
across from The Strand bookstore.
That was yesterday’s news and
tomorrow my daughter 
will be hooded
for her doctorate
in psychology. She works 
in a state mental hospital 
filled with America's 
damaged children.
Bailing daddy out of jail is not
on the commencement program. 

 
What then is witness
from such a distance?
What were Palestine 
or Vietnam to Baldwin
when he wrote those words?
Sometimes knowing
the horror is enough
if you can tell it true
far and wide, speak 
out where other voices
fail.
 
Shall I wait
patiently until 
the immigrants are 
gone, for the Black Terror 
of churches, violent riots 
of patriots, all dutifully 
watched over by
mirrored riot masks 
of State clutching
truncheons of rage?
Write the light 
that needs to be,
the flare of rags in 
the heroic poetic
Molotovs of history.

Go Bag for the Final Apocalypse. 

1. A careful inventory of your sins.
2. Sewing kit or set of safety pins.
3. The memory of childhood prayers.
4. Clothes to be arranged in warmer layers.
5. Beloved object given to you by your mother or father
6. Jewelry or anything of value to barter.
7. The book you want read to you as you lie dying.
8. Handkerchief in case of crying.
9. Photo of an absent loved one.
10. Hat and lotion against the burning sun.
11. Some comforting religious talisman.
12. Your journal to write in.
13. A favorite memory of every friend.
14. The person whose hand you’ll hold at the end.