41 - for Diallo

This is a poem I wrote nearly 15 years ago after the Diallo verdict in NY. Amadou Diallo was an African immigrant who was unarmed. He reached for his wallet to pull out an ID and was shot 41 times in the crossfire of NYC police. All 4 police officers were acquitted on charges of excessive force.

I wish this poem were more dated, that this was all over with, not escalating more and more. It's kind of like Bono saying that Sunday, Bloody Sunday was not relevant, and then finding that it was, that it had new resonances that he hadn't anticipated when he wrote it.

This is now dedicated to Philando Castile in Minnesota, and to everyone who has lost their lives to excessive force and overreaction by the police.

Many people say that we need to feel sorry for the police, but that is their JOB. Their job is to put themselves in the line of fire. That is what they signed on for and if you can't take the stress without killing people, without bullying, without excessive force. then turn in your gun and GET A DIFFERENT JOB.


Driving down the street should not be putting yourself in the line of fire. Being mentally ill, homeless, young, old, etc. should not put you in the line of fire. Those things are not the same as signing up to be a police officer, getting paid to carry a gun, and knowing that you are putting yourself at risk when you leave the house. Castile, like Diallo and myriad others between them, did not realize that by leaving their homes they were putting themselves in danger.

I also don't think cops should be on the beat as long as they are. They get a warped view of humanity when they spend 10, 15, 20 years on the beat. They learn to see everyone as a criminal and a threat.

And then there's the militarization of our police forces and our entire society. We as a society have become too militarized. This is what 15 years of perpetual war has done to us, of bringing the war home, of making everyone identify themselves as citizen soldiers in so-called homeland security.

All of this needs to be taken down by many many many notches.

Click on the number/title 41 to hear the audio clip as you read it.

41


For Diallo

Someone must have mistaken you for the Devil,
the monster outside the door that could not be killed with mortal means.

I bathed in the river of dead fish;
beside the park a cacophony:
children pointing fingers in a chanting circle.
Beneath my feet the dusty bones of ancestors murdered
in my own myths vanquished
to make me whole.

Although we live like children, these are not games we play.
Absent fathers do not sweep under the bed for monsters after dark.
41 holes in a trembling effigy now tucks us in at night the undertakers
will wax a smile upon your lips as you leave behind an island nation of
inmates to sit upon your throne of honor.

I walked through the skeletal hallway, my joints disconnected my bones
falling away beside me my seams unraveling.

Who brings you into the light at this moment? The flashlight in your face, the steam off your skin, El Diablo, someone must have thought.

____


41 tasks I gave you and the stables remain unclean.
41 days from the deluge/first drop and already you forget how to swim.
41 winks - you will not wake from this sleep.

I bathed in the river of dead fish to rinse you from my skin.

These are not games that we play we run home dusty and
sunburnt expecting someone to tuck us in.

Chicago Day 3

So here I sit in Caribou again. I will be out 10 hours, due to my hosts not being home until later this evening. The problem -- one which was unexpected in both cases -- is that in Chicago and New York there is not really the tradition of coffee shops apparently, which is why there are so many Starbucks and Caribous and other chain coffee shops here. Manhattan, which has everything under the sun, did not have an extravagant proliferation of local coffee shops and I have not found that many here in Chicago either. Then again, haven't felt well enough to venture out too far off the beaten path this trip. I know there are a lot of readings in coffee shops here, but they seem to be farther between than say, Minneapolis, where there is virtually a coffee shop of some kind every three or four blocks, and NOT just a Caribou or a Starbucks! Minneapolitans are snobbish about their non-corporate coffee shops!

Afraid to leave Caribou. I have this heavy computer on my back and I have a lot of work to do. Also, I am still a little bit sick and am at the stage where I am in the bathroom every half an hour, water pouring out of my body as if it has been three days since I was allowed to pee, not thirty minutes. So far, I am not making the most out of this trip or this city, but I do have 3 or 4 more days here, plus an overnight wait for my bus on the return trip. I am trying not to be anxious. This does not come easily to me. I have at once too great a sense of my own mortality, of the possibility that I may not come back this way again, and denial of my own mortality, the side of me that eats junk food and makes jokes while having chest pains and headaches. Today is my first day, or at least first few hours, without a headache in about two months, I realized while sitting in Caribou waiting for the next pee pang to hit me in the bladder.

Travel journals on my way to New York: August-September 2001

Chicago 9:30 AM 5 hours of fitful intermittent sleep

Chicago--where the trains make the streets shake and everyone pretends not to notice. Walk down from the bus depot, down Canal St. which is the coolest name ever for a street I think. Down Jackson. Down Wabash. Too restless to land anywhere. Abortive attempt to eat Jerk Chicken pita and read neighborhood and alternative papers, including the Chicago Reader, the Village Voice of the Midwest. Restless inability to sit still. Abandon heavy spicy gravy meat. Too hot to eat in Chicago. It's always unbearably humid here. People must sweat here even in February. My jeans weigh down my legs, making me too heavy to walk, weightless like an astronaut in a heavy suit, clumsy, unnatural. The food around me all smells heavy, thick, makes me sweat just thinking of it. Completely paranoid that I will get sick--get a cold--out here on the road and be miserable.

The Chicago bus station, rebuilt and relocated in the 1980s, is always miserably cramped and chaotic. Several other people in line with me are headed to Minneapolis and we listen to rumors from staff and other passengers about which buses might leave first--should we wait and route through Madison or Milwaukee? One young man with a Cuban-sounding accent, and I band together to try to figure out the fastest way to get off the floor of that miserable station and on a bus home. It is 8:30 pm and the bus through Madison is not due until nearly 11:00. There is a very short line of people at a door marked Milwaukee. I motion to my conspirator. He holds my place in the Madison line and I jump into Milwaukee. Soon the announcement is made-- Milwaukee, Twin Cities. He jumps in line behind me and we pile on the bus, where we will sit for nearly another hour as others figure this out as well and we pack the bus to 100%+ capacity.

7:30 pm - I can't believe I am finally on a bus! The Chicago Greyhound station is a nightmare. Constantly filled to capacity with lines of people passing through, waiting for connections that never seems to come. My bus left an hour late, but still :45 earlier than the next scheduled bus.

Hammond, Indiana. GI housing and power plants. Towers like giant monsters everywhere. Like those dress maker dummies, only huge, mutant, foreboding. Angry women with their hands on their hips. Haven't been on terra firma since I got on the bus. Interstate 90 from Chicago through this first part of Indiana is like being on the EL trains--the highways are all built above ground like one humongous overpass. But once again, I have waiting out for the less crowded of the 2 buses and have a seat to myself where I can sleep. There are even empty seats on this bus, unlike the one that pulled away 15 minutes earlier, the one everyone was struggling and fighting to get onto.

More power plants. Domes and pools. Indiana must be the Newark of the midwest. Dinner stop coming up in Elkhart, home of the mini-motor home.

Indiana is unimpressive. Good choice to leave Chicago at night. This is the "old economy"--smokestacks and lighted towers. Social realism, soviet style art glorifying the unity of the grime-covered workers. Coalminers or, the other way, glum lifeless apocalyptic future of automatons working beneath a permanently hazy gray sky.

Chicago was delightful. Stretched out and slept in Grant Park beside Lake Michigan.(like the yippies 35 years before me) Felt so GOOD to stretch out after a night scrunched on the bus and then 6 hours of walking.

Indiana must steal or gamble away all of its road funds. This is the worst maintained toll road I have ever been on. What do they DO with the money?

For all of the ugly sprawl of mall areas, the conformist monoculture of chain restaurants and department anchor stores, neon is a friend to both the insomniac and the night traveler. Miles of dark highway with nothing to gaze upon, save for reflected headlights in the opposite bus window and intermittent glances at the moon leave you stranded and suspended, lacking concept of time and geography. Signs of life outside the window, distant from the highway, anchor you, keep you from drifting too far away. It's not quite home . . .

10:30 pm. The Ohio Turnpike. Another new state.

This is much more grueling than I expected. After only a few days, I am already dreaming of home-fantasies of aborting the trip and going to home to her hard futon, messy house, and no groceries.

Managed the coveted back bench of the bus -- 3 seats across-- for the Boston-New York trip. Smell of the bathroom, but room to stretch out. Several tall young men eyed me enviously. The bus is filling up but I am hopeful. There is something sacrosanct, foreboding, about someone already in the back set. I am stretched out where everyone can see me, marking my turf, writing. Not making eye contact, not inviting.

Got a hotel room in Cambridge, the desire for a night in a hotel--privacy, naked time, silent vegetation in front of the television. I have heat rashes all over my body from 5 days spent almost entirely in clothes in hot humid weather. Skin needs air, to breathe. Although there was the brief thrill of public nakedness in the bathroom stall at the Chicago bus station on Thursday changing clothes.

This is only the 2nd of 5 buses that have actually left on time. Go Greyhound and leave the waiting to us.

Spending money faster than expected. ATM in South Station is broken. I leave for New York with 5 cents in my pocket.

Statue of Liberty should add to its sign: Now Entering America. Video Monitoring in Use.

The older man sitting in front of me looks a lot like Gerald Ford with a couple of Richard Nixon features thrown in.

Slept through New York State entirely on Friday. First part of the trip where I had to share a seat, so I shouldn't complain. Very groggy, 3 1/2 hour sleep Cleveland to Buffalo. 3 hours awake in Buffalo waiting for Boston Connection. Awakened every 2 hours for connections, forced to get off bus in some cases. Almost like being POWs, I imagine. Sleep deprived, marched in and out of “holding centers", standing in line, uncertainty of making (being chosen for) the next bus out, crammed in like cattle, loading and unloading your own bas, carrying all the positions you can fit in one or to bags. Obviously, fear for your own life is not omnipresent--unless your driver has substance abuse problems, extreme sleep deprivation like me, or is on a suicide bomber mission. So far so good.

Narcolepsy. Newly developed Pavlovian response to being on the bus. Can't keep my eyes open. Just woke up in Connecticut.

I have become an intellectual nomad--unable to land on anything. Even during my trip, spent most of my time walking walking cities and never stopping. Hard to even get myself to stop and have lunch anywhere--always the feeling there was something better or different or more unique waiting somewhere.

*******************************************

I feel guilty for coming home to normalcy after being in New York. Like I should be there. Like I shouldn't be allowed to forget. The images so clear in my mind already starting to fade, to look like tv re-runs.

I came home terribly sick from the greyhound trip. I tell people I have just been to an underdeveloped national called Greyhound where I suffered inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, etc. You've already read the refugee/pow comparison here.

I sleep constantly. After 12 hours awake I'm completely exhausted. Can't tell if it's depression or from the trip. I've finally started dreaming again, but every time I do, I dream that I am in the middle of a disaster. Last night, I was a school child who saw a tornado. I keep trying to tell everyone about it, but no one believed me and would come in from the playground. Everyone finally saw it and got in ok. I think we were in a fire station hiding from the tornado, although the basement seems to have been the one from the house I grew up in. That makes sense, since we were the only house on the block with a basement and everyone used to gather at our house during tornado alarms. I know there was a disaster in my dreams the other
night too, although I can't remember what nature. Not a plane crash or war, nothing quite that obvious. Only remember the feeling of it.

I'm living in fits and starts right now--I get a burst of energy and start something, but then lose momentum for a day or more. Don't know what to do with myself.

Travel Journals: Minneapolis-Chicago-Indiana, September 2001

I'm pulling this out of my archives. It's a piece of writing that I've never really done anything with--my travel journals leading up to September 11, 2001.


Travel Journals, September, 2001


Again (and always) at the bus station, feeling out of sorts. Uncertainty over small things—whether or not to check my larger bag (I have 3 bags including snacks—1 over the limit); will I get a seat to myself where I can stretch out to sleep? I don’t want to be the last one getting on the bus. Maybe I should just go home and scrap this trip. When did I become so ill at ease with the world? Two drunk men hover around the bus terminal. One wanders in, stops inside the door standing still and weaving. Through the doorway, our own gazes are fixed, impatient and hopeful, waiting to board our bus. The man assumes we are staring at him, pauses, begins shouting at us. Why are you all staring at me? I didn’t do nothing. I DIDN’T DO NOTHING. He mutters and crosses from one side of the station to the other.

Earlier another drunk man passed through the terminal, escorted by security. There was no evidence he’d done anything wrong beyond his obvious mental and partial physical incapacitation. The cop “steers” the man over to the lockers for some reason. I thought I saw the cop slap at the man, but in peripheral vision, hard to say who smacked whom. The cop is trying to get the man to use a locker, but the man is having difficulty. Hell, I’m sober and I had a hard time using them. The cop starts yelling at him impatiently to just follow the directions and the man becomes more and more frazzled, more desperate, starts yelling “mind your own . . . mind your own . . .” More slapping. Really, it’s more like swatting and I can’t tell who started it, but it’s making me anxious and my sympathies fall with the man being slapped as he struggles with the locker. Suddenly the cop grabs him and starts throwing him around, throws him over a table, handcuffs him and takes him away. I can’t figure out why he had to be in this guy’s face in the first place. I never know what to do in these moments. I want to yell and tell the cop to leave the poor guy alone. All I can manage is to seethe passively, muttering “fucking cops”.

The originally scheduled bus is overloaded, so they call in a second bus. Drivers are called in the middle of the night and we finally leave at 2:00 am, an hour and forty minutes later than scheduled. Damon Wayans does not hassle me about my bags and I manage the much-coveted back seat of the bus, which has three seats rather than two, in which I can stretch out and sleep through the night trip. I watch the Seattle-bound bus next to us fill up like a clown car, wondering how they’ll fit all those people into that bus. I start to feel anxious for them and finally settle into my own seat, grateful and sleepy.

After five hours of intermittent sleep, Chicago—where the trains make the streets shake and everyone pretends not to notice. I walk down from the bus depot, down Canal Street, which I always think is the coolest name ever for a street. Down Jackson. Down Wabash. Already too exhausted and restless to land anywhere. It’s always unbearably humid when I’m in Chicago. People must sweat here even in February. My jeans weigh down my legs, making me too heavy to walk, so overweighted that I become weightless, like an astronaut in a heavy suit, clumsy, unnatural. I’m completely paranoid that I will get sick—get a cold—out here on the road and be miserable for the next 10 days. An abortive attempt to eat Jerk Chicken pita and read arts papers. The unbearable humidity and lack of sleep make this the wrong choice of cuisine. Abandon heavy spicy gravy meat and move on to the lake. I wander around the Art Institute. Look at the Surrealists. Sit in the Café. In Grant Park I stretch out, backpack under my head, and sleep. I pride myself on my ability to sleep anywhere—on a bus, by the lake in Chicago. It feels so good to stretch out in the grass after a night scrunched into bus seats and 6 hours of walking the city. I take off my shoes and curl my toes into the grass, feel earth beneath my sweaty, soggy astronaut jeans.

Back at the bus station, I can’t help but wonder why they abandoned the much larger shelter on Clark and Randolph, right in the middle of the Loop, for this small, crowded, out of the way station. Ten or 12 blocks from the lake, at least 6 blocks from anywhere to get a sandwich or a bit to eat. The old station had a Burger King, a gift shop, several levels to explore. You had the sense you were in the city, not hanging among warehouses in an even seedier area of town. Too many undesirables at the old station, I’m sure. The new station is constantly filled to capacity with lines of people passing through, waiting for connections that never arrive.

Hammond, Indiana. GI housing and power plants. Towers like giant monsters everywhere. Like those dress maker dummies, only huge. Mutant, foreboding. Angry women with their hands on their hips. I haven’t been on terra firma since I got on the bus. Interstate 90 from Chicago into this first part of Indiana is like being on the el trains. The highways are all built above ground like one humungous overpass. I start to feel a bit seasick overlooking roofs of small houses but completely unable to determine anything about the land we’re traveling above. Once again I have scored the less crowded of two buses and have a seat to myself. There are even empty seats on this bus, unlike the one that everyone else was struggling and fighting to get on only 15 minutes before mine. Smugly, I stretch out, take off my shoes, and rub my feet as I look out the window and scribble. More power plants. Domes and pools. Indiana must be the Newark of the Midwest. Dinner stop coming up in Elkart, home of the mini-motor home.

Indiana is unimpressive. I made a good choice leaving Chicago at night. This is the “old economy”—smokestacks and lighted towers. Social realism, Soviet style art glorifying the unity of the grime-covered workers. Glum lifeless apocalyptic future of automatons working beneath a permanently hazy gray sky.

Indiana must steal or gamble away all of its road funds. This is the worst maintained toll road I have ever been on. What do they do with the money? For all of the ugly sprawl of mall areas, the conformist monoculture of chain restaurants and department anchor stores, neon is a friend to both the insomniac and the night traveler. Miles of dark highway with nothing to gaze upon, save for the reflected headlights in the opposite bus window and intermittent glances at the moon leave you stranded and suspended, lacking any concept of time and geography. Signs of life outside the window, distant from the highway, anchor you, keep you from drifting too far. It’s not quite home, but so familiar nonetheless.

10:30 pm. The Ohio Turnpike. Another new state.