Godzilla

Godzilla

Who is this monster wading up
from the dark bay of Japan's subconscious?
Misbegotten offspring of some
reckless atomic tinkering
or rash sin against nature.
The fleeing miniature people know him all too well;
they can place no faith in their ships and planes,
machine guns, tanks-- kamikaze acts of loyalty
against this judgement
so wet and still awful in memory,
trapped between
the monsters of history
and the monsters of imagination
the thudding explosions stomping
across the skyline,
the flame-thrower-melted flesh,
the fire-storm-trampled-squashed-
smeared-and-incinerated innocents
buried to rot beneath the rubble of empire.
For what fatal collective sin
this utter, this final, this savage defeat?
Is he not the embodiment of nightmares
dredged up from the sea?
Tokyo, Okinawa, Hiroshima, the rest?
Oh crushed blossoms!
Oh land of honorable corpses?

Last Tango

I thought it was the best movie I'd ever seen.
I fell in love with Maria Schneider, round-eyed nymph of
winter Paris, so fresh and yet so ripe for sinning. Thinking the
the movie showed how true love could only spring from
emptiness and despair with authenticity and passion its soil.
And the more it had no future, the more it might blossom,
rooted in nothingness, floating in a void of freedom from lies.
Those were existential days. One had the toughness of youth
and the advantage of being without both foresight and hindsight. In the half-sleep dream of time, which is ignorance, it was possible to believe the most ardent love could grow out of suicide and naiveté and exist
heartily in a realm of intimate anonymity. How well I understood the
attraction of barren rooms, accidental days, nameless couplings,
intentional cruelty, savage, selfish embraces: it all seemed obvious to me, living a lucid flic in a gray Paris of the mind.

In the Holy Land

Here in our not-so-holy land,
No tanks are peering down the streets
Or children throwing stones, snipers on roofs,
Or avenging angels loosening rockets.
At least, not for now.
We love one another just enough
To keep from killing ourselves in any great number--
Though there is blood enough on our pavements,
And janitors have sometimes sprinkled sawdust on floors
Of schools to remove the gore of slaughtered children.
But these are aberrations--
Here we have money to make and spend,
A keen distraction for the inner ape.
In the cycle of production and consumption,
There are no races, creeds, or sects
So odious the marketplace forsakes them.
So if we feel holy sometimes
It's more because we haven't time
Or energy to spare for cultivating necessary hatreds
(Which, anyway, would doubtless be
Counter-productive and bad for business)
Than because we are kinder, gentler, or wiser.
Not so over there, where the absence of malls,
Shopping centers, and amusement parks
Leaves a void into which dogma and passion can flow,
A place where people believe and are prepared
To blow themselves and others up with
The sincerity of their believing.
So if we feel holy sometimes
It is not because we are devout,
But because we have overcome belief
And mastered the art of apathy.

Copyright 2001 by H. L. Rucks. All rights reserved.

This Instrument Can Teach

At the very earliest age

They reach through the irises

And scrape out the brains

Implanting visions of We the People

And leaving not the tiniest scar

As we watch the detectives

Sniffing out the mutants

Cruising sinister dirtbag alleys,

And the good judges bound by all that's sacred

To punish lives that can never be undone.

The voices of authority, of law,

And all the lies that money can buy

Distract us from ugly revelations

About ourselves and who we might have been.

It all comes down to affording the right life--

One you can be proud of, show off to friends--

One not too much unlike the others,

One meticulously well-planned but