by Steve Hellyard Swartz
mocking the little boy who lost his mother
I hear Shiloh, Spain, Rwanda, the Congo
I hear the drums and the sticks and the midnight clicks
which signify that the time is nigh the time for coddling over the time for teachers, doctors, mothers, fathers to grab a machete and slice the long black ribbon that runs around the false center of our world the false center that was promulgated by the former masters of science the masters disgraced the masters of what used to be known as the human race the human race expressed in the voice that reeks of fat and success the human race that has a new face the face with its maw that opens yellow with the dawn, as yellow as fat around the heart a mouth that speaks in the language that ennobles the wealthy only, the language that is spat and farted and shat as sic transit gloria mundi, the language that shoots the buffalo for sport, the language that calls here, here to the harmless dodo, the language that has no word for come and a million for go, the language of fat triumph and fat the throne on which it sits, the language of the sun, the father, the holy spit
Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady County in upstate New York. Between storms, he writes poetry that has been published in New Verse News, Haggard and Halloo and The Kennesaw Review. His poetry has earned Honorable Mention in The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (2007 and 2008), as well as The Mary C. Mohr and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. In 2009, his poetry appeared in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, which he wrote and directed and in which he co-starred, opened in Dramatic Competition at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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