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The poetry of Leonard J. Cirino
Part Two: War-Rants & More Rants
Chronology that breeds
from nameless crimes more time for nameless crimes.
They have their maids. They winter in the sun.
a righteous killer
or patriot-
and all the casualties keep secrets.
# 22 Mister Hatter's Uncle Nick
Mister Hatter's Uncle Nick designed
And engineered the first skyscrapers
In LA, the Tishman Buildings. He was
The West Coast Director of HUD
Under FDR. Later, he wanted
Chavez Ravine to be used as low-cost
Housing for the working poor of the city.
The city fathers and Brooklyn Dodgers
Had other ideas. In his fight
For the housing, Uncle Nick
Was called before the HUAC.
My father says there was a photo
In the labor paper of Uncle Nick
Waving his finger in McCarthy's face.
The caption read, "Nick Cirino tells
Joe McCarthy to go to hell."
# 23 Mister Hatter Sees the Rapture
A sarabande of gloom, the masks
Of Republicrats ache dark for days
Of war. They chant "freedom"
Doomed by skewed slogans.
They reek of riches, too much croissant
With flour white as skin. They're rancid,
Days old, and gone beyond their time.
The ball begins and dancers push
Their faces into masks of plenty,
But for the many there's not much.
Awe begins the war for a hundred days
But four years later we begin to gasp,
Winded by the thrust of thousands
Dead and maimed. Clapping, they float
Their hands up, sing, "Hallelujah,
The time has come. We'll fly with wings."
# 24 Mister Hatter Sends a Letter To
Whom it May Concern
Counterfeit patriots!-why not riots?
Swindlers, deceivers, raconteurs,
Tear out the hearts that you don't have.
Why not stockade their masks
And faces? Pillory them! Pillagers.
The wrong should eat dung, be hung
By their feet and beaten bloody-
Like they do insurrectionists.
Let them get crushed, pushed aside
By tanks. Give them babies' burst eyes,
Wide-open, dead. Let them drink oil.
Signed, God's obedient servant,
The Hat-Maker
# 25 Hat-Man, Hit-Man, He Can't Get it Straight
"The dead keep secrets," Hatter's told
By voices sweet and sour, succulent
As violets, fitful as blackberries.
They beat his thoughts with ghosts inside.
"Religion is a glutton for salvation,"
Says one. Another replies, "Opium
Is for the masters of the masses."
Do ideas from the mind go out
And send the death squads in?
The boys who bang asphalt,
The girls burning flesh and bone
Like trash. Nothing answers
But the silent meadow, trees
That weren't cut for paper.
# 26 Hatter Sitz
From where Hatter sits on low bum-bench
The high court looks absurd, he thinks
While thinking of Uncle Tom Thomas, Rehnquist,
Scalia, and the rest of the reality shape-shifters:
Intolerant, snob-scholars, pseudo
With their intellect and false labors.
"Should we become ex-patriots,"
He asks his mother, retired, who thinks
The Cabinet scum, but labors under dreams
The Demopubs are better. "Better not,"
She says, "because?". she looks way back
In mind, and can't find an answer.
# 27 Plunder/Wonder
Listen to the bodies flop, blunt against
The wooden coffins. No photos, less
Taxes for the Texas rich, but fleece
The poor, the beaten flock. They should
Know their place, is it in heaven?
That's saved for those who're saved
And can pay their way. The day
To dayers don't have time to repent.
(Someone told Hatter that thirty percent
Of the US is one pay check away
From homeless). Treason, traitors
In Washington. Gates open,
All aboard for heaven. Terrorists?
Hatter's said for thirty years or more
The biggest organized terrorist
Is the US gubermint. Plunder
The state! No famous poets say this.
No wonder! Their grants depend
On happy faces.
# 28 What if our leaders lied,
and we believed them?
Michael Mott, from Corday, 1986
I'll make it short, in medical terms-
Washington's DC'ed responsibility.
Diseased? Resist and seize them.
Case closed.
# 29 Mister Hatter, the Mole
From his position underground,
Near the deep fringe, Mister Hatter
Would like to create the Central
Insurgency Agency, or, more profoundly,
Disrupt the Crumbled Intelligence.
He also reads FBI as FIB.
One voice among thousands,
He sees millions in disarray. Chaos
May have a pattern, he thinks,
But the world has turned random.
All for one, one for all, he believes
A little. But when he combines
Power and greed to the nth degree,
He deduces the s(c)um of civilization.
Leonard J. Cirino
Springfield, OR
Born in 1943, he is the author of fourteen chapbooks and nine collections of poems from various presses in the past eighteen years. He lives in Springfield, Oregon, and has devoted over thirty-five years to reading, writing, editing, and publishing poetry. He has received no prizes, grants or awards. He is simply a hardworking and very prolific poet. His most recent collection of poems is Glossolalia (published by Pigmy Forest Press).
This site updated Nov. 2005
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