The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 11/22/08

[BlueIris]

"Nov 22, 1988"

In California
The day looks as though it's seen a ghost
An obstreperous storm is heading for the Sierras
The forecast is cloudy gloomy and gray"
There is not a dry eye on TV,
They're showing the archival footage
Air Force One setting down in Dallas
The bouquet in Jackie's hands
The cruel scene in Washington as
Politicians grapple with your coffin
The riderless horse,
Little John John saluting
The face down in Cuba
Ich bin Ein Berliner

You told the White Citizens
Councils that if you could
Negotiate with Khrushchev then they could
Negotiate with Negroes
You made old Miss
Swallow hard
You slammed Alabam'
Stuffing its throat with
Jim Crow
Even on Dan Rather's face
There is a struggle

It's been twenty years and
His youngest wants to know
Why did they murder you?
The theories are as common as homeless
People, huddled together in
The Port Authority
Under a bridge in Santa Cruz
Lafayette Park
Across the street from the White House
He agrees with the day
He feels like an old back pain
Eloisa wants to know, why
He is acting like a grinch
As he swivels, grumpily,
In her barber's chair
And maybe Carla is right when she says
You were just like all the rest—only smoother
But when they took you out, Jack

It was as though
His generation was hit
In the belly with a medicine ball
They never fully recovered
Their wind
Their shape
Their tone and
They don't care what the
Tabloids say, Jack
You are still their boy

And maybe it's best that you
Left them, waving from a motorcade
A smile bigger than Texas
Fresh as that Oct. day Askia and he
Saw you stride into the Carlyle Hotel
Bareheaded, unovercoated
Surrounded by men
Shaking in their long johns
It's not pretty what's become of US
It's like the room inside a grisly
Crime movie, about which the homicide
detective warns
"Don't go in there"
It smells like something
That's been dead in the sun
Too long
It jerks about like the new chief's syntax

It has the style of an inside
Trader's ill-fitting collar
It bungles along like
Your lunkish successors
In black tie, and tails, executing a mean
Fox Trot at the Inaugural
Ball

—Ishmael Reed