Mexico

May 23, 2023

THE BLEEDING EDGE

We are lovers of novelty, we want
all that is new or clinging
to what we imagine are our roots.
It has long been this way,
you need only look at the map.
Hampshire, York, Jersey, and
for that matter Brunswick and Mexico.
We crave innovation, we always
want to be on the cutting edge, forgetting
that all too soon it will become
the bleeding edge, and we will curse
its failures, its shortcomings.
So ask yourself if those who live
in Hampshire, York, Jersey, and
Brunswick, Scotia, and Mexico
think they live in a place that is
no longer new, left behind in
an endless search for something
other than what we have right now.

March 22, 2023

STATUS OF LIBERTY

Do us a favor
hold back
on your tired, your poor.
We’re no longer real hot
on those yearning to be free.
We left it on the plaque
but no one’s supposed
to read them anyway.
Take the hint,
we closed the Island,
made it a museum
that ought
to tell you something.
Emma’s dead, get it,
and Lazarus, well
just read your Bible.
We closed the sweatshops
and shipped out
all those menial jobs
to Mexico and the Far East
so you’re of little good
to us now.

So stay home
at least until you’re fluent
and can speak at least
one Scandinavian language.

First appeared in 45 Poems of Protest,Eleventh Transmission, 2019
https://waxpoetryart.com/eleventh/2019/faber.html

September 29, 2019

HERE LIES

Ambrose Bierce walked into Mexico
one day, and was never seen again.
That was surprising enough, but
more so, he left no epitaph, the least
you would expect from a writer.

In retrospect, perhaps he was
the smarter one, for I know othersl
who have spent countless hours
trying to devise the perfect epitaph,
knowing they never quite got it right.

I almost fell victim to that trap,
but avoided it the moment that
I realized that regardless of what
I might so carefully select, it is
my heirs who will have the final say.

July 2, 2019

SOUTH OR SO IT SEEMS

It was tacky then, it’s epitome
and six decades and unknown views later
it hasn’t changed at all.
You don’t expect tackiness
to accrete, yet like a black hole
this is irrefutable evidence it has.
To say it is garish to insult
the term, since it is so much more,
beyond anything the term can describe.
It has grown uglier, something not
thought possible, yet here it is.
You cannot fathom why Mexico,
which truly lies just south of the border,
has not filed a diplomatic protest
over this quintessential insult.
In Jalisco state, you imagine
A thousand Pedro’s would cringe
if they knew what had been wrought
in their name, and the South Carolina
state police, you think, they just up the road
knowing the wiser travelers will step
on the gas in a vain attempt to escape.